


The City Sorrow Built

by LastAmericanMermaid



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Peggy Carter, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Brainwashing, Changes to timeline, Doomed Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Feels, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Natasha Feels, Natasha-centric, Pain, Past Torture, Red Room, Super Soldier Serum, Timelines, a love story featuring four people reaching for someone who are reaching towards someone else, author has constructed backgrounds based on comics and MCU along with own ideas, sexuality is very fluid here ok, this might not end well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5096507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastAmericanMermaid/pseuds/LastAmericanMermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1937, a little girl was taken from her family in Petrograd to a place where she learned to kill with every piece of herself. </p><p>In 1949, Agent 13 discovers that the Russian HYDRA branch is kidnaping and brainwashing young women to become assassins. </p><p>In 1950, Peggy Carter and the girl who would become Black Widow meet for the first of many times. </p><p> </p><p>In 2016, Natasha Romanoff mourns the woman never meant to love. </p><p> </p><p>(A very complicated alternate universe in which Natasha was born in 1930, given a bastardized version of the Serum when she was 18, and kept on ice on and off until coming to SHIELD in the 80s. Warnings for heavy, heavy angst. What if Natasha'd had to listen to Steve talk about how hard it was to visit Peggy and remember how much time he'd missed? What if she had to pretend like Peggy Carter was just a woman in a file and in history books to her?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_2015 - Washington D.C._

Margaret Alice Carter, best known as Peggy, is laid out in an elegant casket, lined in satin the color of butter mints.

There are too many tasteful floral arrangements around the casket, roses and lilies and all manner of flowers people think will say what their words are too clumsy to.

The service is full, which makes it easier for Natasha to slip in and out unseen, though no one would question her presence. No one would question her presence at Agent Carter’s funeral service because, in the front pew in his dress blues sits Steve Rogers, eyes and nose gone pink from tears shed on the ride to the church.

But for all that Rogers can be oblivious, for all his blind faith in humanity (even when humanity continues to spit in his face), he wouldn’t be able to miss Natasha’s tells. And that would lead to questions, voiced gently, hesitantly—Rogers is always so careful not to step on anyone’s toes. As though being careful with people’s emotions will somehow balance out the havoc his body can wreak when he forgets his size, his strength.

But if he did, if he asked that quiet question, Natasha would be trapped.

She’d have no choice but to tell him about decades in and out of a freezer, of stolen moments under the noses of their respective masters. She’d have to tell him about a little girl taken from her home and turned into a killer. And, much as she trusts Rogers (which is more than Natasha can say about 99.999% of the earth’s population) there are somethings that should stay buried.

The corners of Natasha’s mouth twitch faintly as she recalls what she told Rogers in the cemetery that day, at Fury’s empty grave.

 _Might not want to pull on that thread_ , the words echo now through her head, her own voice almost mocking.

So, instead of sitting in the front next to Captain America as he mourns the loss of his only (other) great love, Natasha slides deftly into the back pew without turning so much as one head.

That could be because she’s wearing a babushka over her hair, her face wiped bare of any trace of makeup. The headscarf is patterned, a vestment worn out of piety for the Orthodox church Natasha never really belonged to.

She was much too young, and then her family was gone, so it didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

The reverend eulogizes in a bland monotone, and Natasha hears his words the way you’d see rural grasslands out the window of a moving car on the interstate. She does not look at the empty shell in the casket that used to be Peggy Carter.

Instead, she shuts her eyes for a moment and imagines glossy dark curls, and full, curving red lips.

Tucked into the lining of Natasha’s coat, unopened, is a letter addressed simply to Tally. It is postmarked and dated, sent in the spring of 1985.

Before the reverend finishes, Natasha finds herself slipping out of the church as quietly as she came in.

 

In the safety of her latest fast, black car, with shaking hands she gets a fingernail under the edge of the envelope, breaking the twenty-some year seal of glue to paper.

_Tally,_

_Last I heard, you were in Belarus; I don’t doubt you’re long gone by now._  
  
_Even so, if you are still there, do take care of yourself? I know you’re a damn good shot and quick as the devil, but even supersoldiers have weak spots—oh, don’t listen to me. As an old woman, I find I’m prone to rambling. Forgive me, darling. You’ve likely heard by now, but I’m retiring._

 _The new Secretary of Defense doesn’t like the questions I’ve been asking about the file—_ [crossed out so as to be illegible] _—so it’s more me being pushed out than anything, bloody sniveling cowards, the lot of them. I suppose I’m not sure why I’m writing to you now, only that I sat down at my desk and this is what came of it._

_Is it too sentimental of me to say that some days I miss you with the ache of a phantom limb? I suppose it is, but I’ve already written it. Chalk it up to old age again._

_Do you remember, love, that hotel in Prague? You never looked so beautiful, with your hair all wild from the bath, wrapped in just the bedsheets…good lord. Imagine what any of the agents would say if they looked over my shoulder and read this. Perhaps I’ll leave it lying out before sealing the envelope for post, give any snoops a good shock._

_I think what it is that I’m doing a spectacularly poor job of saying is that, well, darling—you’ve not aged a day. You’re still that stunning young woman with freckles on her nose and wine-stained lips, and I’m…well. Mortal, as it happens._

_We mortals run that risk, you know, every so often of falling in with one of your lot. I think it must mean something that it’s happened to me three separate times in this life. Perhaps I’m cursed._

_Anyhow, I’ll finish while I’ve still got most of my thoughts gathered up (they are prone to wandering a bit far out of reach these days, more and more as time goes by)._

_Please don’t come to see me in future—I couldn’t bear it. I think it’s best for all involved if we say our goodbyes now. Remember me as I was in Prague, and that shall have to be enough._

_I’ve left more information at the usual place regarding the matter I wished for you to pursue; please do be careful. Your life is precious, more so than you could ever know._

_Yours,_

_Ritochka_

Natasha blinks rapidly down at the words on the slightly-yellowed SHIELD-issued stationary, now starting to blur.

No. Not right now. Clenching her jaw and turning the keys in the ignition, Natasha stares straight ahead, focused and ready as ever.

Not, contrary to popular belief, ready as she was made;

ready as she was born.

. .

_Three times?_

Hours later, Natasha remembers the words as they appeared in Peggy’s beautiful, flowing hand on the page.

Genetically-altered people aren’t a dime a dozen even now, but they’re not unheard of in this age of Norse Gods and space aliens. Mutants.

Back in 1985, though…

Natasha racks her brain, sorting out every possible explanation, the most likely being that Peggy’s mind was already beginning to dull at the edges, and she’d meant two. That’s it, isn’t it? Natasha is not above counting silently in her head, using the fingers of her left hand for reference.

Steve, that’s one; Natasha herself, that’s two…

And mother _fucker_ , it hits Natasha with insurmountable force when she realizes. Cursing under her breath in Russian, she wonders how the hell she didn’t see it.

The American. HYDRA’s bogeyman. The man with hollow eyes who taught Natasha how to draw her pistols faster than a person could blink, to fire them with deadly accuracy from any angle at a split-second’s notice.

James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant in the 107th. The sniper’s ghost who shot Captain America in the stomach and let him fall into the Potomac, only to pull him back out to safety and lay him out on the shore gentle as a lover before disappearing from the grid completely.

 _Three_.

Peggy’d known, always so much cleverer than everyone else. She’d worked it out somehow, way back then, that Barnes was the Soldier.

Natasha wants to hit something, to cleave flesh from bone with one of her knives, anything.

She knows that Peggy would have blamed herself for not rescuing Barnes, same as Steve does.

 

There was a reason those two had been in love, after all. Propensity to get into trouble picking fights was just icing on the cake.

.

She tries to get some sleep, but halfway through the night, she’s wide awake because how the fuck could she ever tell Rogers?

No matter whom she tells or doesn’t tell, or _what_ she tells to which, Natasha knows that she will always feel like she’s betrayed someone, and lately, that doesn't sit so easy in her gut.

.

 

 

_1949 - newly minted SHIELD headquarters_

 

“Howard, I’m afraid I can’t allocate anymore of our resources for—for your expeditions. We’re still too new of an organization, and—”

“—Now, wait just a minute, Carter. Hear me out,” Stark is doing what he does best, filibustering and selling his snake oil.

Peggy sighs and presses her fingers to her temples. It’s not like Stark can’t fund his little ‘hunting trips’ himself; the man’s richer than God, he can do what he likes. It’s just the agents he needs to accompany him that Peggy can’t spare.

“You’ve found the bloody thing Schmidt was using in his weapons,” Peggy says, too exhausted to put any real bite into her words. “What’s left to find?”

Stark’s dark eyes are gleaming with the crazed, manic sheen of a man who’s not seen sleep in too many nights. The dark circles tell enough on their own. Peggy knows that madness, knows what it is he’s really hunting for in the icy depths of the ocean.

“Dammit, Peggy, you know what.” Stark slams one hand down on the desk that separates them, palm smacking loudly against the polished wood.

And Peggy does know what it is that Stark is looking for. It’s just that…it would hurt too much to see him find it.

She is a strong woman, she rarely cries; she does not crack under pressure. Seeing what became of Captain Rogers would be too much, though, even for her. She doesn’t think she could stand it, and she’d rather not test the theory.

Stark drums his fingers on the surface of her desk, waiting for her to say something.

“I can give you Simmons, Parker, and Gilbert,” Peggy relents finally, not meeting Stark’s eyes.

“You’re an angel, Carter. I swear, this’ll be the last time, hand to God.”

“I rather think God would prefer you didn’t put your hand so near him—heaven only knows where it’s been,” she replies tartly.

Howard Stark laughs and stands, bending to kiss Peggy briefly on the cheek, and then he’s gone, door shut behind him.

 

Peggy stares down at the paperwork she’s been mindlessly shuffling for ten minutes and wonders if it makes her awful if she hopes he never finds what he’s looking for.

..

 

_1937 - Petrograd, Russia_

 

Natalia is seven years old when they come for her.

Seven years old when she hears her mother’s raw scream, her father’s choked-off gasp. She feels the cloth come over her mouth before she can make a sound, and then she is asleep. When she wakes up, she is somewhere she does not know, and she begins to cry.

“Best to let the tears come now, before they come for you,” says a woman with sharp eyes and a hint of an accent that is not Russian. Natalia hiccups, face streaked with hot tears.

Someone has dressed her in a cotton frock and leather shoes, much better quality than anything she’s worn before.

Though she is only a little girl, Natalia has always been brave, so, she takes a little breath before she asks the woman, “Where is mama? Where is papa?”

“Mama and papa are gone, little mouse. They have sent you to us so you can learn to be a proper lady,” the woman says, pitching her voice more gently than before.

Natalia is not wholly convinced, but she is clever. A warning thrums in her little child’s body, not to protest, not to ask more. Her parents have taught her to stay alive in Stalin’s Russia. Above all, one should not question those in power.

“Would you like to play a game with me?” asks the woman, and Natalia chews her thumb and nods.

 

That is how it begins, the training. With a stolen child and a game.

. .

Natalia excels in the Academy, surpassing the other girls by leaps and bounds.

She goes through the ballet positions until her body aches, until her body remembers them on its own. Her toes bleed for perfection, and when Madame B. compliments Natalia on her form, the rush of pride makes the bloodstains on her pink _pointe_ shoes feel like they are pure gold instead.

The first time she fires a pistol, the bullet goes straight through the eye of a man who begs for his life.

That night, Natalia is given cake and a new lipstick; for all that cruelty is an effective method of training, rewards are just as effective.

With each test she passes, Natalia feels herself hardening, becoming like a girl made of stone. She knows only fierce pride at exceeding expectations, and the hot sting of shame when she falls short. The other girls either hate her or fear her, and that makes her feel proud, too.

She learns to speak many languages in the Red Room, learns to use her body and her looks to beguile and bewitch. Learns to use her body as a weapon just as she uses her knives and her guns and her poisons.

Natalia learns all about poisons, which to use on whom, how much; how to use just enough to be effective without leaving a trace. She learns how to load guns, how to clean them, to assemble and disassemble them.

She learns how to wire explosives and how to kill mothers in front of their children without blinking.

The day she graduates, they take the last remaining vestiges of her humanity, and she thinks, _good._

 _Good, it’s gone_.

. . . 

 

_1950, Leningrad, USSR_

 

The Russians have been training young women to be assassins.

They’ve been kidnaping them and brainwashing them and turning their blood to iron, and now Peggy’s tied to a chair in a warehouse in Leningrad being watched like a cat watches a caged bird by a girl who hardly looks old enough to be smoking the clove cigarettes she’s been puffing away at for an hour.

The girl's hair is the sort of auburn that doesn’t come from dye, and her skin glows in the dim, faulty warehouse lighting. Though it’s obvious that the girl is young, her figure billows and curves like a woman’s, and the slender length of her arm shows muscle riding just below the skin when she moves.

Wherever they got her from, it’s clear to Peggy that she was chosen because she is from good stock.

She’s dressed in a full skirt and a white blouse, white tennis shoes and socks like an American co-ed. Peggy wonders who dressed her, or if she chooses for herself based on missions.

“Aren’t you going to ask me questions?” The girl asks in impeccable English, barely any trace of accent. It’s the first time she’s spoken, and her voice is husky and low, nothing like Peggy would have expected.

Sitting primly in the cold chair, Peggy raises her chin and stares straight ahead, unblinking.

“You’re not in charge of anything,” she says airily, trying to free her hands from their binding without the girl noticing. “You’ll hardly be the one I want to ask questions.”

The girl tilts her head, corners of her mouth twitching in what must, for a brainwashed assassin, constitute a smile.

“My people won’t let you speak,” the girl says, pulling up a chair to sit across from Peggy. She slides into it with a fluid, easy grace, crossing her legs at the ankles. “They’ll let their goons have their way with you until you’re spilling your government’s secrets at my masters’ feet.”

It sends a chill through Peggy’s body as not many things can these days, hearing this young woman speak so casually about such unspeakably sick things. She can’t help wondering if that is what the girl’s masters have done to her.

“Could I have one of your cigarettes?” Peggy asks, suddenly missing her own Parliaments with a fierce ache.

The girl almost-smiles again, procuring the packet from somewhere inside her blouse, as well as a book of tear-off matches that Peggy notices has come from a hotel in Krakow.

“I’m sorry, I really can’t untie you,” the girl says, leaning close and placing the thin, hand-rolled cigarette between Peggy’s parted lips. “I can hold it for you.”

And it’s less strange than it should be, this stunning, dead-eyed girl holding the cigarette to Peggy’s mouth between elegant fingers, letting Peggy inhale deeply before taking the cigarette away. The smoke is strong and stinging, clove and something else that Peggy can’t place. It seems fitting for what may be her final cigarette to hurt a little.

The girl takes a few puffs herself, and the remnants of Peggy’s lipstick left on the paper has transferred onto the girl’s lips like a lithograph.

“Would you like another?” the Russian asks when the cigarette is gone.

“No, thank you. Perhaps some water?”

The girl nods, and crosses the warehouse floor in strides longer than her legs should be capable of. Peggy tips her head back and closes her eyes for a moment. Her hands are starting to fall asleep, the painful buzz before complete numbness.

If only she could get to the knife in her girdle—

“It won’t taste as clean as you’re used to,” the Russian’s voice is still emotionless, though Peggy snaps her head back up, eyes open immediately.

“That’s quite alright,” Peggy says, manners ever-intact.

 _Wouldn’t Mistress Caldwell be pleased?_ She could almost laugh at the absurdity of it, remembering her etiquette instructor from school at a time like this.

The Russian holds a cup to Peggy’s mouth carefully, tilting it just enough so that the water can be sipped without choking.

It’s _not_ as clean as she’s used to, but it’s cold and it’s water, and Peggy’s had far worse.

“You know, if my people manage to find me before your…superiors get here, I could tell them that you helped me,” Peggy says, wishing she could wipe her mouth on her sleeve after the water.

The Russian seems to be able to read her mind, though, and pulls a handkerchief out of thin air to dab at the excess moisture around Peggy’s lips and chin.

“And what good would that do?” the girl asks absentmindedly, still leaning in very close. “I killed the other operative you were working with, and I won’t be a traitor to my country. Your people would still put me down like a rabid dog.”

Peggy thinks for a moment, then nods.

“But you’re not a dog, are you,” she says with certainty, not really a question at all. “You’re like a cat who’s learnt who feeds it. You could always change your mind.”

The Russian tilts her head again, more feline than ever, giving a little more power to her not-smile. Then, she holds one finger to her full, pink lips.

“ _Shh,_ ” she says, like they are girlfriends sharing a harmless secret.

Then, Peggy’s head begins to feel like it’s full of heady smoke, and she realizes that it was a stupid, _stupid_ thing to do, drinking that water.

 

Before it goes completely black, she thinks she feels a cool hand on her forehead, smelling of tea roses and clove cigarettes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, this was something that just nagged at me for days after I had the little lightbulb about it, so I decided what the hell?
> 
> I'm just finishing up a super fluffy roller derby AU, and I need a super angsty palate cleanser. This will probably be 50,000 words at its end, and written in 3rd-person from Natasha's and Peggy's POVs. I've set it to 10 chapters now because I don't know, but there will most likely be more added as I write. The timeline jumps around, sorry! >_


	2. Chapter 2

 

_2014 - Camp Lehigh_

 

Chasing ghosts down darkened hallways with Rogers, Natasha finds herself face to face with the black-and-white photo of Margaret “Peggy” Carter on the wall next to portraits of the stalwart Colonel Phillips and the ever-slick Howard Stark.

“This is her, huh?” She forces herself to ask, tone conversationally light.

“Just—just don’t, okay?” Rogers says, jaw clenched and shoulders tight.

It’s as easy as breathing, to bite down on her tongue and swallow down the anger that rises in Natasha’s chest.

 _I loved her, too,_ she thinks but does not give voice. _You loved her first, but I loved her too,_ she does not say.

 

When the Zola-computer gleefully tells them both how worthless their lives have been, Natasha is stupidly, selfishly relieved that at least one of her secrets is buried too deep for even HYDRA to find.

.

When Steve visits Peggy in the nursing home, Natasha makes excuses, dropping him off at the door and burning rubber down the block as soon as the car door clicks shut.

The last time they’d seen each other, more than two decades ago, Peggy had told Natasha not to look for her anymore. She hadn’t wanted Natasha to see her aging, like it mattered at all.

It’s a bitter pill, the thought that if she’d been normal, then maybe…

But not really, not back then.

What could they really have had, besides stolen moments on borrowed time? Nights in hotels that ended too soon, letters exchanged in secret? Seeing new lines and grey hairs each precious hour they managed to have, every few months? Years? Bad enough if anyone found out that the Director of SHIELD was in direct contact with a KGB assassin; adding a homosexual affair to that would have only served to tighten the noose around both their necks.

Natasha parks in an empty three-layer commuter garage and waits for Rogers to text her. She locks the car doors and leans back in the seat, closing her eyes to try and remember.

. . .

_1953 - Stalingrad_

 

It’s three years after their first encounter that she meets the Englishwoman again, ‘Agent 13,’ and Natalia feels an unfamiliar sensation blossom low in her belly.

Agent 13 is alone in a dark corner of a pub in Stalingrad, sipping a gin and tonic without fuss, chatting to the weary-eyed bartender in fluent Russian.

Natalia doesn’t know why the woman is here, whether she is following a trail or working a different mission entirely; all she knows is that something about the Englishwoman’s eyes make her hungry. There is something in those eyes, like a spark. Like a challenge.

What does Natalia love more than a chance to prove herself?

She perches easily on the stool beside Agent 13 and orders herself a drink.

It’s clear by the looks on the squashy, depressed faces of the bar’s patrons, that they don’t get many women here. Especially not women with glossy hair that’s been rolled and actual silk stockings.

“You’re a long way from New York City, Agent.” Natalia says in English that no longer contains any trace of her original tongue.

Agent 13 turns to look at her, lips ghosting over with a small smile.

“And you’re awfully far behind on your intel,” she says primly, though her eyes are dancing. “We’re in Los Angeles now, where dreams go to die.”

And there’s so much feeling in her words, from the dry sarcasm to the teasing lilt. Natalia wonders how the older woman can do it so easily.

“Are you so tired of Hollywood sinning that you’ve come back to Russia to do penance?” Natalia asks, taking a sip of her drink after the barkeep hands it to her.

It tastes like snow and clean-burning fuel and nothing at all.

Agent 13 shifts in her seat, turning her body so she completely faces Natalia now. Their knees touch for half a second, and the slide of silk almost makes Natalia gasp.

“I’m not, actually,” Agent 13 says, straight, white teeth glinting in the bar’s dim light. “I’m here on business, but I’m sure you’ve already sussed that out.”

Natalia kicks herself for not being sure. She must do better in the future. She must always be three steps ahead, if not more.

Changing tack, she wonders what other buttons she might push, what secrets she could get the older woman to divulge.

(The last time they met, she’d got nothing at all. Pain did little to no good in greasing the wheels of confession or squealing. Agent 13 would kneel for no one.)

“Are you waiting for someone?” Natalia asks, angling her head in just the right way so that even the poor lighting in this rat trap makes her features play softly on her face. “I’d hate to think I was taking up your time.”

Agent 13 is leaning forward a little now, whether she’s aware of it or not, a curious, faraway look in her eyes.

“You’re quite like someone I used to know once,” she says lightly, more to herself than to Natalia. “During the war, he…he’d use his charm to hide what he’d suffered.”

And _oh_ , Natalia is practiced in the art of deflection, of graceful diversions.

“You find me charming, Agent? Even after what happened the last time we met?” She asks coyly, still unsure how to play this.

Appealing to women’s motherly instincts, their nurturing urges, is usually the best way. With Agent 13, though, Natalia knows this will not work. Perhaps, she could present herself as a friend, a sympathetic woman who, though on the opposite side of the river of ideology, can understand what it’s like to be a female agent in these stagnant times.

There is also a third angle, though it is not one Natalia has tried with a woman.

It makes her stomach flutter not unpleasantly to consider. It is likely a long-shot, and Natalia is about to crumple the idea and throw it into her mental wastebasket, when she notices the flush that has crept into Agent 13’s pale cheeks.

“I recall saying something as to your feline qualities, last time.” Agent 13 says, lips resting on the rim of her glass. “As I’m sure you’re aware, cats can be entirely charming when the mood suits them.”

Natalia wonders what it would be like to feel the soft skin of a woman under her hands, the smell of powder and lipstick mingled together with sweat. It is not the first time she has wondered, but it is the first time she has wondered with a clear image in her mind. The thought makes her face feel warm, and drives her to make what is without doubt a foolish decision.

“I’m staying somewhere not far from here,” she tells Agent 13, sliding the matchbook from the little hotel across the sticky surface of the bar. “Perhaps we ought to talk somewhere more private?”

And Natalia only catches a glimpse of the beautiful surprise on Agent 13’s face, the way her red lips part and carefully shaped brows raise.

She leaves money on the bar for the keeper, and walks on far steadier legs than she’d thought back across the pub and out into the city at night.

.

When there is a knock at her hotel room door, Natalia’s heart pounds against her ribs. She twists the knob and wills herself back to even ground.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Agent 13 says brusquely, though the high color in her cheeks betrays more than she’d clearly like.

“Please, come in.” Natalia opens the door wider so the other woman can step lightly over the threshold.

There is a moment of stillness, both women taking the other’s measure, trying to work out what to do next.

When Natalia finds herself nearly nose to nose with the Englishwoman, she struggles to remain neutral, to remember her training.

“This is what you were really asking, isn’t it?” Agent 13 says softly, hand finding purchase in the thin material of Natalia’s nightgown. “Well, come on, then. Mustn’t dawdle.” And then she is kissing Natalia, pressing those beautiful, red-painted lips against Natalia’s with an unhurried sort of insistence.

It’s different, it’s _so_ different, from the rough, greedy male mouths Natalia has allowed to assault her own. There is the faint scent of violets, the downy softness of the other woman’s cheek against hers, the sticky interruption of lipstick.

Curious, Natalia opens her mouth a little, granting Agent 13 better access. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it until it’s done; Natalia has brought her arms up to loop around the older woman’s neck.

It’s strange, to tilt her head up for this kind of kiss. Natalia wonders whether or not she’s taller than Agent 13 in heels.

“I’ve never done this with a woman before,” Natalia says when they part to breathe, surprising herself.

She doesn’t know where the words have come from. It isn’t like her to be so honest. Agent 13 smiles kindly, undoing the buttons on her coat.

“It isn’t much different from doing it with a man,” she says matter-of-factly, tossing the coat onto one of the nearby chairs. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”

And with her mouth and her hands, Agent 13 does show her.

And shows her, and shows her again.

 

When they are both lying naked in sweat-damp sheets, smoking Natalia’s cigarettes, Agent 13 turns to look at her, lipstick smeared across her mouth and most of her jaw.

“Margaret,” she says gently, smiling just enough to reveal the dimples Natalia hadn’t noticed she’d had.

And it takes half a second for Natalia’s brain to catch up, to realize what the older woman is offering. Something far more precious than any intel: her name.

“They call me the Black Widow,” Natalia replies, closing her eyes as she takes a deep drag from the fast-shrinking cigarette. “But you can call me Natalia.”

It’s a dangerous move, to give away the only thing of value Natalia has in this world. Perhaps sex makes her stupid when it’s with a woman. Perhaps it is merely because she knows that Agent 13— _Margaret_ —is too pure to sell Natasha down the river.

“Hmm,” Margaret taps her chin, thinking. “I think I should like to call you Tally, if that’s alright.”

Natalia tries to squash down the warmth that blossoms in her chest at the foreign diminutive.

She’s annoyed that such a thing can make her feel so good.

(She’s annoyed when anything can make her feel at all.)

“We’ve only got five hours until my people will come looking for me,” Margaret says, stubbing out her cigarette and reaching for Natalia. “I’d rather not spend it talking, if it’s all the same to you.”

 

Natalia opens her mouth and her legs in silent agreement.

. . .

 

_2015 - Present_

“Did he ever know?” Natasha asks Rogers, who is currently sitting in her kitchen, holding an ice pack to the nasty bruising along the entire left side of his face.

There’s no need to use names; Rogers knows who Natasha means without even having to ask.

His mouth is a tight, grim line as he shifts awkwardly in his seat.

“Yeah,” Rogers says, sounding more beat down and defeated than Natasha’s ever heard him sound. “Yeah, he knew. We—since before I was big.” He shakes his head, wincing a little when he remembers the nasty blow to the neck he took earlier.

Natasha hums a few bars of a song she’d swear up and down not to know if someone asked, rinsing out her coffee pot to start fresh.

“Must have been hard, loving him back then.” She says carefully, hunting through cabinets she’s not home enough to be familiar with until she finds the coffee.

Rogers—and Natasha _knows_ it’s silly for her to keep thinking of him as 'Rogers,' especially after everything they’ve been through together—sighs and shifts again in his chair.

“Loving him was the easiest thing I ever had to do,” Rogers— _Steve_ says quietly. “It was everything else that got in the way, made my life complicated.”

Natasha never could help her curiosity, though she’s always remembered what it did to the proverbial cat (and remembered what someone once told her about her being like a cat) so she sits back down at the table and puts on the face of a friend.

“So how did Agent Carter fit into all that? Did she know about you and Barnes?” And the man’s name feels strange and awkward in her mouth, as strange as it felt when she found out that he had a name other than what his HYDRA handlers called him.

Steve’s brow furrows under the ice pack, and he draws a long breath through his nose.

“I would have married her,” Steve says, something raw creeping into his voice at the edges. “In a heartbeat, if I’d had the chance.”

Natasha, trained to catch every little thing about a person, does not miss the way Steve doesn’t answer her question.

“How did Barnes feel about all that?” She asks, getting up to pour two cups of the fresh coffee.

“He—he knew that I was gonna ask her, after the war ended.” Steve laughs, and it is a brittle, hollow, humorless sound. “Before he—before Bucky fell, I wasn’t so keen on the idea.”

“Because of him?”

“Of course it was because of him.” Steve says flatly, like he’s feeling every single one of his 95 years, like he really wants to say _and fuck you for asking, you ignorant asshole._ “Jesus, of _course_ it was. He was my whole fuckin’ universe.”

Natasha turns this new information over in her mind like a smooth stone in the palm of her hand. She feels like she’s finally cut deep into the heart of the matter, and she’s preparing a bucket to catch the entrails poised to spill out.

“‘Was’?” She levels Steve with a look, and he frowns.

“What’s with all the questions all of a sudden, huh?” Steve snaps, dropping the ice pack so he can glare at Natasha with both eyes. “You have no goddamn idea what this feels like,” he hisses. “Nobody does.”

Natasha knows what he means, knows that there’s no reason for him to believe that what he’s saying is anything other than the truth.

Natasha also knows that Peggy lived her life on the other side of mirror, living without Steve and hating herself for not being able to rescue Natasha from the Red Room.

“I’m just trying to understand,” she says, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry, it was insensitive of me.”

And Steve Rogers is nothing if not forgiving. The spark of life that anger seemed to give him goes out like a lit match in the wind, his shoulders slump and his eyes are sad.

“I keep forgetting that you knew him, too.” Steve says, misinterpreting everything as usual. “Not the same him, but still him.”

Natasha feels the shiver down her spine of a narrow escape. Ducking her head, she lets him believe what he thinks he’s figured out.

“Even…” she pauses for emotional effect, a trick that has helped her thousands of times in her many lives, “Even as…conditioned as he was, he was an easy man to love.”

Steve reaches across the table to take her hand in his, giving it a squeeze and not letting go.

“So you understand why I can’t give up on him,” he says earnestly, and Natasha doesn’t have the heart to do anything but nod.

. . .

 

_1944_

 

That first night, in her red dress, Steve only has eyes for Peggy.

It would make her smile to remember, were the memory not overshadowed by the gaunt, freshly-rescued specter hovering at Steve’s shoulder. Trying desperately to catch Peggy’s attention, to lead her away from the light like he must have done to a hundred other girls.

It does not go unnoticed, the way that Sergeant Barnes’ wary eyes follow Captain Rogers when he moves. Watching Steve’s six (and every other corresponding side) with the unflinching, sharp gaze of some hunting bird.

Nor does it go unnoticed how Rogers looks for Barnes too, the way his whole demeanor seems to change when the other man is nearby. His shoulders relax, his smile is easier. He angles himself towards Barnes like sunflowers raise their faces to the sun.

Peggy sees, and she catalogues, and she slams the file drawer in her mind shut tight.

 

And the drawer remains locked, until the day after Sergeant Barnes is lost to the ice and snow of the Alps, and Peggy finds Steve alone in a bombed out pub with an empty bottle in his hand and the light gone from his eyes.

She’s already read the reports, so she doesn’t need to ask him what happened.

Rather than clinging to his side like some flimsy character in a film, Peggy tells it to him as straight as she can. It’s difficult to look at Steve’s face, blotchy and pink like he’s been slapped, with red-rimmed eyes still wet with tears.

Peggy has to stomp down on the urge to put her arms around him, to pull him to her and stroke his hair, to whisper soothing words the way one would try to calm a child.

When she tells Steve to allow Barnes the dignity of his choice, she inwardly tells herself to allow Steve to grieve with dignity.

Mothering him would do him no good. He’s been treated like he was fragile for the better part of his life, and doing so now would only be a detriment.

When she tells Steve that Barnes must have certainly thought Steve was worth it, she hopes that Steve understands the meaning beneath the words. 

_I know you loved each other. I know and it's alright._

 

She knows ( _hopes_ ) that Steve's heart is big enough to love her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh ok here is the second chapter, and I do think I'll be upping the chapter count, but we'll see. 
> 
> I realize this ship is super obscure, but I'm still hoping SOMEone will read it and let me know how it is :) 
> 
> <3


	3. Chapter 3

 

_1953 - Washington D.C._

Peggy knows what a woman is supposed to feel on her wedding day.

(She also knows what people have said about her behind her back; that she’s getting on in years, that she’s lucky she found a man to take her, though she’s clearly married to her career.)

And Johnny _is_ a good man, understanding and mild-mannered. He doesn’t mind that Peggy is more often than not too busy to spend evenings at home with him, doesn’t mind that she’s rather more concerned with typing up reports than fixing suppers.

Still, standing in her white dress, veil in place and bouquet in clasped, gloved hands, Peggy finds herself thinking about what could have been.

Then, inevitably, her thoughts drift to what never could be.

Would Steve have looked at her from the altar like Johnny is doing right now? With eyes shining and mouth fighting a smile? Peggy walls off that thought, doesn’t allow it to continue existing. She must separate the Steve Rogers that she knew from the Captain America who died to stop Schmidt. If she tries very very hard, some days, she can even convince herself that it was nothing more than puppy love. They’d only kissed just the once, after all.

When John kisses Peggy, signaling that the ceremony is coming to a close, she realizes that she must have said her vows completely on autopilot. Her mind had wandered to a place where the smell of cloves hung heavy in the air, where nimble fingers had tentatively traced latitudes and longitudes across the uncharted territory of her body.

She lets her new husband brush the tear from her cheek, lets him think that she is just so overcome with happiness.

.

When the party is over and they’re in their bed, when he’s undressed her and let her climb on top of him, John puts his hands over Peggy’s breasts, arching his hips up as she rides him diligently.

Peggy wishes she’d had the chance to do this with Steve, just one time, before it all went to hell. Just pushed him into an empty office at HQ and had her way with him.

She wonders what Barnes would have thought of that. Hell, if she’s fantasizing about things that are impossible, why not invite Barnes too?

Steve would have been shy, that much Peggy knows. He’d have trembled to touch her, probably would have gone pink at the sight of her completely undressed.

Barnes was a man who knew what he was doing, though, that much was clear from the way he carried himself. A person didn’t have swagger like that unless he’d got his sea-legs many times over.

She’d have let them both have her, have each other with her in-between. Peggy wonders if they’d been intimate with each other, or if it was something they didn’t dare act on.

She is inclined to think the former; Barnes and Rogers had moved in each other’s space with the casual, fluid ease that only people who have been fucking for a long time can manage.

Back in the real world, John groans, bringing Peggy out of her daydream.

The sex here and now is nice, but it is boring, and Peggy has had better.

She imagines straddling the Russian’s face gently between her thighs, guiding the younger woman’s hands up to cup her breasts, to pinch and roll her nipples between eager thumbs.

While her new husband’s eyes are closed, Peggy slips a hand down between her legs, light as a feather, and helps herself along.

Let him think it was all him. Male egos are fragile, predictable; keep them purring like spoiled cats, and they’ll give you no trouble.

Peggy sort of hates how cavalier she’s become about the whole thing.

She also hates the nagging hope that she’ll see her little Russian again.

. . .

 

When Peggy was at school, she learned what was to be expected of a lady.

She listened and kept her face pleasantly blank while all the time thinking how much she bloody hated it, how much she’d rather die than be little more than an indentured servant to some boorish, entitled man.

As a young girl, she’d had perpetually dirty knees and grubby fingernails, scuffed knuckles from giving bullies a good dusting up when they went too far. The teachers had told Peggy’s parents that she was ‘spirited’, and that the best place for her would be somewhere with more strict guidelines.

By the time she was sixteen, Peggy had already figured out how to break most of the rules at St. Martin’s without being caught, the least of which included drinking on school property from the Headmistress’s private stores.

It was at St. Martin’s that Peggy first acted on natural curiosity about her own gender, experimenting with a willing (and eager) roommate named Violet. Nearly every girl did it; there were no boys for miles, save for the groundskeeper’s spotty son Geordie, and only the most desperate girls ever went off with him to the woodshed for a tumble.

Instead, Peggy preferred to rub up against softer bodies, to discover and catalogue each new clever trick to make her nerves sing.

When she graduated and went on to university, she thought she’d left all that behind her.

When she met the Russian in the dirty pub in Stalingrad, Peggy thought perhaps it was time for her to pass on all she’d learned.

. .

She meets the Russian once more that same year, after she’s been married to John for three months.

This time, it’s in London, and the Russian catches her completely unawares, coming up from behind her in a dark alley and pressing her hand over Peggy’s mouth.

“Fancy meeting you here,” the Russian says, in that incongruous voice of smoke and cold mountains.

Peggy hates how her body relaxes, how her mind does not conceive of the girl as a threat, though she _knows_ full well how dangerous the Russian is.

It is far too easy to slip away with her to a hotel in one of the seedier districts, to give the uninterested clerk a few extra pounds to let them forgo signing any names.

.

“You’ve been busy,” Natalia says, holding Peggy’s left hand and sucking on her ring finger.

Peggy tries not to moan when she feels the Russian’s tongue flick against the diamond set in its gold band.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the luxury of remaining unattached.” Peggy replies, somewhat breathlessly. “People ask too many questions of a single woman past thirty, government agent or not.”

They’re both mostly undressed, though Peggy’s still got her panties, garter belt and stockings on.

(As soon as they’d locked the door to their little suite, Peggy was surprised how greedily the Russian reached for her, kissing her so fiercely that their teeth clashed.)

Now, she finds herself pinned to the bed and being teased to a slow death by the girl, who was clearly a quick study.

Peggy notices that Natalia’s hair had been dyed, a more vibrant, unnatural red. Unsurprisingly, it suits her.

Peggy thinks that most things would suit her; she’s been trained to look as though she fits anywhere.

“You’re soaked,” Natalia hums, stroking over the growing dampness at the crotch of Peggy’s underthings. “You’ll have to go home with them in your handbag.”

Peggy tsk’s, shuddering as the Russian presses a hot, openmouthed kiss to the fabric.

“Utterly filthy,” she scolds, opening her legs wider anyhow. “Though I suppose you’re right. These’ll likely be ruined.”

“Better then to take them off, hm?” Natalia quirks one brow, already tugging at the waistband.

Peggy bends her knees and lifts her legs to aid in the removal of the panties, but when she goes to undo her garter-belt, the Russian grabs her wrist.

“Leave it on,” she says lowly, her flashing eyes a deep, mossy green in the poor light. “I like you in stockings and nothing else.”

Then, without further preamble, she dips her head low to tongue the folds of Peggy’s cunt, to suck at her inner lips and her clit.

Within five minutes, Peggy comes so hard that her vision goes starry, thighs squeezing and hands tangled in Natalia’s hair to hold her head in place.

 

After a quick, dizzy comedown, she beckons the Russian up to straddle her head on the pillow, eager to return the favor.

. .

In the brief time they have left together that evening, Peggy finds herself telling the Russian about Steve.

She tells Natalia about how she became an agent, and how she first met the tiny boy from Brooklyn who would become the hero in all the propaganda for the rest of the war.

It’s easy, easier than she could have imagined, to share such private, dear memories with a woman who she’s only met three times.

A woman who, of those three times, she has climbed willingly into bed with on two occasions so far.

Natalia does not say anything, and Peggy prefers it that way.

When she kisses the Russian one final goodbye before leaving, she finds that she feels just a little bit lighter.

.

When Peggy’s husband asks her where she’s been, she hears herself recite some rote old lie about working late, and she wonders when she became the sort of woman who has affairs.

Lying in their marital bed, beside the man who has so far treated her well and never asked questions, Peggy wonders if Natalia is sleeping in their hotel suite, or if she’s since moved on. She wonders if the Russian is cold, and if she is, does she mind.

Peggy wonders, belatedly, whether she oughtn’t have showered before climbing under the covers with her husband.

She thinks she can still smell rose and cloves like a faint whisper on her own skin.

. . .

 

 _1955 – Location unknown_  

Codename: Winter Soldier.

The man with the metal arm is a ghost story, but there are those who know the truth:

Every ghost was once a man, and the one they call the American is no different.

Natalia’s first encounter with him is more educational than anything; she is taken to a facility in Ukraine and made to watch as he is taken out of the cryostasis chamber and brought back to life. If what he has can be called a life.

The HYDRA scientists who handle these procedures are bland, bespectacled men with forgettable faces. They strap the Soldier into a chair before he can become coherent, taking care to reinforce the bindings.

The man called Ivan who is handling Natalia whispers to her in Russian about what happened to the last doctor who did not properly sedate and subdue the Soldier—the Soldier used his metal hand to literally crush the man’s throat.

After an hour, the American’s head is no longer drooping, eyes open and looking around the room without recognition.

“Where…where is Steve?” The American asks in Russian, sounding genuinely confused.

Natalia has never heard the name ‘Steve’ before, but clearly the doctors in their white coats are no strangers to this scenario. The one called Lukin who seems to be in charge speaks to the American the way one would speak to a particularly dull child.

“There is no one by that name, Yasha.” Lukin says gently, and his voice makes Natalia’s skin crawl. “Are you prepared for mission briefing?”

The Soldier struggles against the binding, plates of his metal arm shifting and flexing.

He is completely naked, and Natalia can see faint scars all over the sharply-honed musculature of his body. The skin around the place where the cybernetic arm is attached is angry and red, poorly healed and painful.

The American growls through clenched teeth and says again, more loudly “ _Where_ is Steve?”

“Oh, dear.” Hums Lukin, handing his clipboard to one of the other pasty men. “I’m afraid we can’t tolerate this kind of behavior, Yasha. You know what comes next.”

In his chair, electrodes fixed to his body like EKGs, the Soldier makes a broken, awful sound. It’s the sound of a frustrated, trapped animal, and Natalia wants to cover her ears.

(She listened to those children screaming, crying, begging for their mamas and did not flinch. This sound is somehow far worse.)

A rubber mouth guard is shoved into the Soldier’s mouth, a helmet covered in wires crammed down onto his head, and Natalia does not move.

She stares, unblinking. She knows what will happen to her if she shows any sign of weakness, even the slightest flinch.

Currents of electricity rip through the Soldier’s body, and the noise torn from his throat is more horrible than the one before. Natalia swallows, just to give her mouth something to do.

“The shocks are administered to specific regions of the brain,” explains Lukin calmly, as though the man in excruciating pain is just a figment of Natalia’s imagination. “The subject is particularly difficult after longer periods of stasis, often grasping at his strongest memories from the moment he regains full consciousness. These memories invariably all feature the man known as Captain America.”

And Natalia _knows_ that name. The hero who saved his country and sacrificed himself to the depths of the ocean, a mythical figure not only in America.

Natalia also knows something else; the man who was Captain America was also in love with Agent 13. She was in love with him.

Natalia wonders how this man—more machine than human, no matter that his body is still mostly flesh—came to be here.

How did someone with old, powerful memories of Captain America end up as HYDRA’s killing puppet?

The shocks stop abruptly, and an injection of something is administered by one of the underlings. The Soldier’s head droops again, and he makes a low, keening sound.

Lukin _tsk_ ’s like he’s actually sorry, though it’s more the sorry of a man who’s dropped his breakfast on the floor than any real sort of pity.

It is several minutes before the Soldier regains consciousness once again, but the time passes slowly, and Natalia feels the tension as acutely as a muscle pulled too tight.

Finally, he lifts his head. One of the underlings removes the mouth guard, and the Soldier speaks.

“What is my mission?”

 

Natalia makes the mistake of looking into his eyes, and in the back of her mind for the rest of the day is the fervent prayer that her eyes never look like that.

. .

Working with the Soldier is strange.

He is more efficient a killer than anyone Natalia has ever known, and she learns much in the three-day span of their mission.

He barely speaks, but there is still something haunted in his blue eyes that Natalia feels certain would not be there were he truly as mindless as they all say.

What she sees is not an empty-headed vessel to carry out HYDRA’s plans to shape the century; what she sees is a man trapped inside a body that no longer belongs to him, being forced to act as his masters’ command.

It makes Natalia’s stomach sit strangely, and she finds herself trying to offer him any small, inconsequential kindness she can think of.

When they are told to wait in an empty house for the next set of instructions, the next names to cross off, Natalia offers him some of the food she’s scrounged out of the pantry of the man they killed earlier. (His unidentifiable corpse has been disposed of without ceremony.)

The Soldier hesitates before taking the food, but once he has it in hand, he scarfs it down like a starved dog. Natalia realizes with a start that he likely has not eaten anything since before he was frozen last, five years ago.

She recalls vaguely one of the HYDRA doctors saying something about intravenous nutrition, allowing for optimum levels of each vitamin without allowing the subject to experience the tedium (read: _pleasure_ ) of eating actual food.

She finds she has to look away.

. 

The fourth day, something odd happens.

The Soldier seems to have a different personality. Or, perhaps, just to _have_ a personality.

He is agitated and jittery, looking around and tapping his foot while they wait for extraction.

“Gotta smoke?” He asks Natalia in English, and his accent sounds far too comfortable to be practiced. She doesn’t miss a beat, handing him the pack of cigarettes she has tucked inside of her jacket.

He lights it himself off one of the (completed)target’s kitchen stove’s burners; when he inhales, he eyes Natalia with wary interest.

“How’s a dame like you get mixed up in this business?” He asks, dragging deep on the cigarette, holding it between his metal fingers.

The slang is outdated, and Natalia gets the feeling that he is older than he looks. She also can’t shake the feeling that the person piloting the Soldier’s consciousness currently is probably the one who belongs there.

Unsure of how to proceed, Natalia lights her own cigarette, just to have something to do.

“It’s a long story. Boring,” she adds, using her American English. “We’re not supposed to ask each other anything outside of the mission parameters.”

The Soldier (or whoever he is right now) snorts, stubbing out the butt of his smoke in the palm of his metal hand.

“Your accent is good,” he says with a laugh. “It’s real fuckin’ good, but you’re not American.”

Natalia says nothing. She is growing more uncomfortable with each passing second that their extraction does not arrive.

“Okay, I’m gonna ask you to level with me,” he says suddenly, leaving his place on the sofa to pace the dirty floor. “Where are they keeping him?”

“Keeping who?” Natalia asks, keeping her voice even.

The Soldier gives her a flat look, stopping mid-stride.

“For the love of— _Steve_ ,” he says, exasperation written all over his face. “Where are they keeping him? Why won’t they let me see him?”

Natalia feels that crawling sensation in her gut again, like she had in the lab when they’d given him the shock treatment.

She does not want to have to lie to this man, but she does not know enough to give him the truth, either. She does not think it would be wise to tell him what truly became of the man called Steven Rogers. 

“I…” she says slowly, steadying herself “I don’t know. They…haven’t told me anything. I’m just a soldier, a weapon. Like you.”

The Soldier stares at her for a long moment, like he’s taking her measure, weighing out her words carefully.

Then, mercifully, he gives a tiny nod.

“I have to find him,” he tells her, and his voice carries an undercurrent of panic. “I gotta—never mind, I just need to figure out where he is, that’s all.”

The Soldier doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the time that they wait, and Natalia is, deep below her cool exterior, shaken.

 

She hears later from one of the men at her base that the Soldier tried to escape, violently taking out nearly forty HYDRA personnel before being successfully apprehended and sedated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a little smutty, so I hope I did okay ;p 
> 
> I'm glad to see that this is getting a little interest, I'm really enjoying writing it. 
> 
> The timeline will continue to jump around, and the next chapter will probably be focused on the events in TWS and beyond. 
> 
> <3 thank you for taking a peek!


	4. Chapter 4

 

_2014 - Washington D.C._

Watching from a safe distance as Steve wanders through his own exhibit at the Smithsonian, Natasha finds herself face to face with a larger-than-life black-and-white standee of the man James Barnes used to be.

He’s rakish and handsome in his enlistment photo, though as the war progressed, she can see the fatigue more pronounced around his eyes in each later picture.

The exhibit says that he is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country. Natasha quirks one brow and snorts faintly, bitterly; whoever wrote that doesn’t know the half of it.

It’s hard to imagine Barnes as he is now, hard and dirty and haunted, being the kind of guy who took care of Steve when he was more mouth than anything substantial. Natasha wonders why Steve even comes here, what he’s looking for amidst all the propaganda and neatly informative placards. What he’s hoping to find, clawing frantically through the rubble.

Shuffling over a little ways, she notices Steve stopped dead-still in front of a little screen, transfixed by whatever grainy footage is being played on an endless loop. Natasha gets a little closer, sees the huge grins and the shared looks of two people with a bond made virtually unbreakable by the twin polymers of history and loyalty.

Natasha sees, even in such old film, the way Barnes looks at Rogers when Rogers is looking elsewhere. It’s the way a person looks when they’re standing next to all they ever wanted and are trying desperately not to want it.

Natasha wonders if she’s ever looked like that.

She stops at the little wall display about Peggy Carter and wills her heart not to clench in her chest.

Turning on her heel, Natasha goes to tap Rogers on the shoulder; it’s time to get out of here while they’re still not-yet immobilized with the ache of their respective losses.

. .

_2016 - Brooklyn_

“You’re going to break his heart,” Natasha tells the man who is no longer the Soldier, but not quite James Barnes.

She happened upon him under circumstances that to anyone might appear as chance, but not to someone as sharp as Natasha; now, they’re sitting on the rooftop of the building next to Steve’s complex, sharing raw truths under a moonless sky.

“Already did that,” Barnes says, low and ragged. He’s dirty, clad in heavy layers of clothes and wearing a grungy ball cap pulled down over his eyes.

“Then why are you watching him?” Natasha asks plainly. “You know he’s going to find you,” she has never been one to overcomplicate things with pretty, useless niceties.

Barnes looks away, flinching a little. Then, recovering, he snorts wryly.

“Steve never could see what’s right in front of his face, I doubt much has changed.”

Natasha hums, thinking. “But he noticed that you were in love with him, didn’t he?” She guesses, and by the way Barnes closes his eyes, she knows she has guessed correctly.

“We were stupid,” Barnes says, more whisper than voice. “So stupid. All the times we coulda got caught, risking everything just for—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head and biting his lip.

“You remember him, then,” Natasha says, not a question.

Barnes’ head snaps up and his eye flash like lightning over the ocean at night, like ice pressed to warm skin. If it were at all possible anymore, Natasha would be unnerved by this.

“I _always_ remembered him. Sooner or later,” he rasps, like the very idea of forgetting Steve Rogers for good is more horrible than any of the other countless nightmares Barnes endured. “You don’t…you don’t forget a person like that—not for anything.”

“He isn’t going to give up,” Natasha levels him with a look of her own, acutely aware that her chances of warning Barnes off of Steve are circling the drain. “Rogers is dumb and persistent. You know that better than I do.”

Barnes huffs with something that maybe, once upon a time, was a laugh.

“I’m the worst thing that ever happened to that punk,” he says, bemused. “Or maybe he’s the worst thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes, I used to think we’d never be able to get free of each other, live like normal, honest men were supposed to.”

“He told me you wanted him to marry Agent Carter,” Natasha supplies, careful in her prodding, curious as ever as to how much information she can glean.

“Yeah, and what should I have done, huh?” Barnes spits, bristling. His mechanical arm whirs warningly. “Carter was the best thing that could have come his way. But I think you already know that, don’t you?”

Natasha feels like she’s been slapped, though the sting doesn’t last more than a few seconds.

“Agent Carter sounds like she was a hell of a woman,” she plays her cards straight, bluffing without a blink. “It’s a shame she lived in such a misogynistic era.”

Barnes’ mouth lifts in a half-smile, and he tilts his head to look at Natasha in the dark.

“You’re good, but you aren’t that good,” Barnes says, never breaking eye contact. “I saw you leaving her funeral. I know your SHIELD papers are fake. Born in 1985, huh? Funny, I seem to remember a mission in Cuba in the 70s—”

“Shut up,” Natasha grits out, voice deadly low. “Shut the fuck up. How did you find that out?”

She’s upset, and she’s not keeping her cool like she’s used to, but something in Natasha feels frighteningly as though it has come unmoored in the storm.

“I was sent to tail once, in the early 60s,” Barnes recounts, like he’s reading from a page in a book. “It was summer, Paris. My…HYDRA sent me to spy on you, the KGB had put you into some high-clearance shit over there.”

Natasha tries to will herself numb as Barnes continues.

“One night, you slipped away to this little boarding house in the seedy district where all the whores did their business.” He laughs without humor. “You met Agent 13 in an alleyway and then together you got yourselves a room for the night.”

Natasha doesn’t want to, but she sees it all in her head like a color movie, with the sounds and the smells, and Peggy’s soft, strong hands.

“I saw how she looked at you,” Barnes’ lips curve in another not-smile. “That’s what helped me snap out of the conditioning that time, Peggy’s smile when you weren’t looking. She used to look at Steve like that.”

. . .

_1961_

_And they shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old…_

That bloody poem comes to her sometimes when sleep is evasive and the pills seem too easy a fix.

It’s no wonder; the damn words were everywhere after the war, both wars.

That line, though, has always haunted Peggy, always tugged and twisted a tender tendon somewhere deeply threaded in her fabric. Would Steve have started to see flashes of white in his blonde hair? Would the little lines in the corners of his eyes begin to deepen, slower to fade when he smiled?

 

 

When Peggy meets Natalia in America in early 1961, she knows that Steve would not have aged a day.

The Russian is more polished now, her edges have been smoothed and her creases ironed; she wears a smart suit and a smart bob, speaks with a lofty surety to match.

Gone is the girl who still wore hunger under her skin like a shadow; in her place, a capable, fearsome woman. Peggy can see, though, under the expertly applied makeup and the exquisitely tailored suit, Natalia’s skin is as fine and smooth as alabaster, still plumped and bright with youth.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” the Russian chides, moving into Peggy’s space with the same relaxed ease she always has. Putting her hand to cup Peggy’s cheek, she flutters her eyelashes in farce. “Don’t you like me anymore?”

Peggy looks away. Between giving birth to two children and helping to run SHIELD, Peggy knows the years are beginning to show upon her face, even with her good English skin and expensive night creams. But clearly, that doesn’t bother Natalia, so Peggy sighs and closes her eyes, leaning into the younger woman’s touch.

“Darling, ‘like’ has got nothing to do with it,” she whispers, head full of Natalia’s dizzying scent, still the same as ever.

White roses and clove, now with a wash of bergamot. It suits her, like most things.

“I got your letters,” Natalia hums, slowly working her way through the buttons on Peggy’s blouse.

They’re swaying gently to the music on the record player, a sad, soft jazz number to muffle their words in case of bugs.

“And?” Peggy thinks fleetingly of the two envelopes tucked carefully away under a trick panel in the back of her desk. Two letters in Natalia’s hasty scrawl, full of dry, dark sarcasm and wholly indicative of a very Russian sense of humor.

“I may have information for you about the one matter,” Natalia says evenly, tugging the now-open blouse down and off of Peggy’s shoulders. “But I think I’d rather do this first, before we talk business.”

And Peggy can support that, yes, especially when the Russian reaches around to deftly undo the clasps of her bra with one clever hand.

.

“You’re still beautiful, you know,” the Russian says, glancing up at Peggy from where she’s currently got her head pillowed on Peggy’s breast. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Stop it.”

Peggy sighs, wishing for a cigarette though she’s given them up for three years now.

“I’ve got _wrinkles_ ,” she says bitterly, like the very idea offends her. “Wrinkles and stretch marks and—did you know I’ve got to dye my hair now? Too much grey to cover with a little mascara.”

Natalia props herself up on her elbow and levels Peggy with a look.

“You ought to let it go grey,” the younger woman says thoughtfully. “It would suit you. And you’ve hardly got wrinkles. Besides, you’re beautiful. Just because the Venus de Milo has some chips and cracks, does that make her less of a masterpiece?”

Peggy snorts in spite of herself.

“Oh, go on.” She laughs, feeling rather lighter suddenly. “Did they teach you how to sweet talk like that at the KGB, or is it something that comes naturally to you?”

Natalia smiles, a bright, rare thing which blooms only once every few years.

“What’s the matter, you don’t like sweet talk?”

Peggy grins, rolling her eyes and ignoring the remarkable ability the Russian has to make it seem as though no time has passed at all since last they met.

“You really do remind me of someone I used to know,” she says, remembering Sergeant Barnes and his endless supply of charm. “He was a terrible flirt, and horribly good-looking. Trouble was, he knew it, too.”

Peggy smiles fondly. Then, remembering her handbag, she sits up in bed. “Would you like to see him?”

Natalia, still wearing that beautiful, open expression, nods and nestles into the blankets while Peggy rummages through her pocketbook for the old photograph.

The only one she carries.

“Here you are,” she hands the photograph to Natalia, tapping one manicured nail at the man on the righthand side. “That’s Steve. Captain America, you’d know him as. He was sweet as a lamb, even after they made him into some kind of hero. Always had a knack for getting himself into trouble, though.”

But Natalia is focused intently on the man to Steve’s left, a small line forming between her brows. Peggy points to Barnes.

“That’s the one you remind me of, Sergeant James Barnes, probably making time with all the angels in heaven, God rest him.”

Natalia stares hard at the photograph a moment longer before looking up to meet Peggy’s eyes.

“And he was an American soldier? One of Captain America’s men?” she asks, eyes hard and serious.

“Yes, he was American. And not just one of Captain America’s men—you could say he was his _only_ man, really. They were inseparable since childhood, James and Steve. Steve was a wreck when James died.” And still, it stings to remember Steve's red-rimmed eyes, his wet sobs. 

“The American,” Natalia breathes, more to herself than to Peggy, as though she’s just figured something out.

Then, abruptly, she’s out of bed and pulling her clothes back on.

“Meet me in Moscow as soon as you can,” she tells Peggy, who can only nod. “I don’t have all the information yet, but I will get it. The man in the photograph…” she trails off, then shakes her head. “Just promise me you’ll be there. Find a way to send word, and I’ll come find you.”

Peggy feels very off-balance, the blood rushing in her ears like waves crashing on a rocky beach.

What could Natalia have seen in an old photo that’s got her so spooked? Peggy isn’t sure she wants to know, which, of course, means she likely _needs_ to know.

“Yes,” she promises the Russian. “Yes, I’ll come. Just… _do_ be careful, darling. It’s silly, I know, but I worry.”

Natalia gives her a little smile, crossing back over to lean down and give her a kiss that leaves her toes curling and hands reaching for more.

“I know. I do, too.”

And then she’s gone, leaving Peggy alone with a jazz record and a still-warm half of the bed, the only evidence someone else once occupied this space.

. . .

 

 

_1962 - Red Room_

 

Natalia never makes it to the rendezvous in Moscow.

She thought she was being careful, that she hadn’t been followed, that her movements had not been tracked.

She was wrong.

They catch her compiling intel about the man in the cryofreeze tank known as Winter Soldier, though they do not know why.

They torture her, then wipe her mind.

Then, for the first time ever, they put her in one of the tanks, too.

Before she fades out from the drugs and the pain, Natalia wonders if Peggy is waiting for her at the place they'd agreed on.

. . .

 

 

_1967 - NYC_

“Oh, here we fucking go,” John slams his hand down on the table, palm smacking sharply enough to disturb the tumblr of gin he’s poured himself.

They’re arguing. Again.

Peggy’s glad the girls are away at school, at least. She worries that they’ll hear the ugly things their parents say to each other when they row, that they’ll start to ask questions about things they’re still too young yet to know.

This time, it’s to do with Peggy’s frequent trips out of the country. It’s an old sore spot, one that John clearly can’t let lie.

“ _Really_ , John, you knew what you were getting into when we got married, I would hope you’d be used to the idea by now.” Peggy rubs a hand over her forehead.

It’s late, she’s been at work all day, and all she wants is to have a bath and go to sleep. Coupled with the anxiousness she’s been feeling about several years of radio silence from her Russian liaison…

John had been waiting, though, sitting at the table with her latest itinerary and a judgmental expression.

“You’re forty-six years old, Pegs. The children are getting older, they’re going to wonder why mummy isn’t home, why she’s always jetting off to Paris or Madrid—”

“Oh, because it’s all just one big holiday, is it?” Peggy can see the dig for what it is; bait, though she rises to it anyhow. “Is that what you think, John? That my job is just some flight of fancy, a bloody vacation?”

John’s eyes flash, and Peggy knows that he’ll rally back with equal force now that she’s taken his bait.

“Well, maybe I’d be less inclined to think so if you actually told me what it is that you do on these so-called ‘business trips.’” He crooks his fingers in mocking quotations, and Peggy balls her hands into fists so as not to do anything rash.

She’s always so calm; she’s had to be, for as long as she can remember.

She’s always had a temper, though she keeps it in check so well it might as well not exist.

But now, now it’s rearing its head and breathing fire inside her. Peggy feels something in her just snap, the last thread holding together the seams of her cool exterior.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” She hisses, low and venomous. “Do you? No, of course you don’t, silly little man. While you sit at your desk making telephone calls and crunching numbers, do you have any bloody idea what it is I’m doing?”

Not waiting for a response, she pulls a thick file from her handbag, flings it down onto the table in front of her husband.

“Go on, have a look. Tell me, on the fifth page, in the photograph, does it look like anyone is having a grand old time?”

Peggy knows she’s gone off the rails now, but it’s too late; everything is tumbling out of her and she’s powerless to stop it. She opens the file folder, flips through pages of reports and inventory checklists and codes. Lays the photographs of the dead children from that orphanage in Minsk, the ones of the tortured SHIELD agent they’d found covered in burns, spreads them out in glorious, horrific array in front of John.

“I’ve probably broken about sixty different layers of protocol showing you these,” she says tiredly, already coming down from her blaze of fury. “Before I was the Deputy Director, I was an agent. I do my part in making sure that all those deaths, all those soldiers—that it was worth it. Do you see?”

John says nothing, just pushes the photographs away and reaches for his drink.

“It all goes back to him, doesn’t it?” He says bitterly after awhile, and there is no question about the ‘him’ to whom he is referring.

“I was in the Army long before Steve Rogers joined up,” Peggy snaps, though it lacks heat. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to blame a dead man for your problems?”

And John does not reply, just takes his drink and leaves the room, padding up the stairs like nothing has happened.

 

 

Peggy pinches the bridge of her nose before finding the bottle of gin and pouring more than she should for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, angst. 
> 
> Leave me some comments if you are reading! I would love to hear from anyone :D 
> 
> The next chapter should have more Stucky and other ships mentioned in the tags, sorry that there hasn't been much yet. 
> 
>  
> 
> *The line 'and they shall not grow old," is from an ode popularized after the First World War, written by Laurence Binyon. It's called 'For the Fallen'.


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

_2014_

In Pierce’s office, wearing her disguise, Natasha makes a choice.

There was a time when she was on the side of the victor, whoever it may be. There was a time when her own whims were the only compass by which she made her path.

Now, she is planting her feet firmly on one side of the line. Steve’s side.

The side which would have, she is certain, been Peggy’s side, too.

If she dies here today, everything about her will become public domain, and she won’t be able to add or subtract anything from that sum. Except—she realizes you can never subtract, only add.

When Steve falls like deadweight from the helicarrier into the Potomac, sinking like a stone, Natasha knows that he made a choice, too.

When he is found, battered and unconscious and _alive_ on the riverbank, she knows the Soldier made one as well. 

 

When Natasha does not die in the crumbling Triskelion, almost everything about her becomes public domain, anyhow.

 

 

At least, she thinks sitting beside Sam Wilson in the helicopter, there is still time for her to add to it.

. . .

 

_2011_

Peggy is still herself, more often than not, though she’s starting to need more help getting out of bed than she’s used to. It’s a bitter sort of irony, the way she’s always been so keen to do things for herself, without anyone’s assistance.

Now, to have to be babied this way—it’s humiliating. She wants to scream, sometimes. She’s still _here_ , inside this failing, depleted body. Her mind is still the same, her soul.

Her children come and visit, bring the grandkids. A few times, Nick Fury’s skulked in with a nice bouquet and a little guilt around his good eye; even dried up and deteriorating as she is, Peggy still gets asked advice on tactical subjects by the only SHIELD member who deserved to take up her position after she left.

Sharon, Peggy’s favorite niece, comes more often than anyone else. Well, Sharon and Steve.

And, _oh_ , isn’t that just the stinging hell of it? _Steve_ , found in the ice by none other than Howard’s only son, pulled up from the wreck of the Valkyrie and somehow still breathing. Steve, with his sad eyes and his unease in the bigger body he’ll never really be used to.

He looks at Peggy the same way he did when she was young and beautiful, and for that, she loves him more than words could ever say.

“You know, if you’d have just given me your coordinates instead of being so dramatic, we could have found you in a couple of weeks instead of seven decades, Steve.” She tells him on one such visit, gently chiding.

Ducking his head, pink flush creeping up his neck to the tips of his ears, Steve laughs.

“You always said I was too dramatic for my own good,” he is looking at her wistfully, biting his lip almost shyly.

It is no wonder, Peggy thinks, Dr. Erskine chose Steve for his serum. The heart inside his weak body was always so much more worthy than those of his peers. Thinking of Steve’s heart coaxes the words from Peggy’s lips without a chance to second-guess.

“Steve, you must look after yourself, do you understand?”

He tilts his head, and Peggy sees that he does not. “Of course, Pegs. Why, what is it?”

She takes his hands in hers, tries not to look at the contrast between the pink, pretty skin of his and the wrinkled, crepe-paper of hers.

“Steve.” She looks him dead in the eyes, tries to be as commanding as she once was. “You always did need looking after. I would imagine it’s rather lonely to be here in this new world, even when you’re surrounded by other people.” Steve looks away, and Peggy knows her words have found their mark. “You always…you always had Barnes for that, before.”

She hears the sharp intake of breath at the mention of Barnes’ name, and feels his hand tighten reflexively around hers.

“I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was about that, Steve.”

He raises his eyes to meet her gaze again, and Peggy hates herself, just a little bit. Those aching blue eyes are as old as Steve’s real age, though they make their home in his youthful face.

“You didn’t have to.” Steve says quietly, voice tight with everything he’s always tried so valiantly to tamp down. “I knew you were.”

Peggy brings one trembling hand to cup Steve’s cheek, smooth and downy—the skin of a young man who’s only just begun shaving.

“Oh, Steve. He _loved_ you. I know you loved each other. It’s an awful thing, losing someone like that.”

Steve’s eyes go wide with comprehension, and then his shoulders sag and his face twists with the effort it takes not to cry.

“I don’t know how to stop looking for him in a crowd,” Steve says hoarsely. “I—I catch myself about to say something to him, I saw him fall with my own eyes but I still—”

“—It’s alright, darling.” Peggy tells him, opening her arms. “I know.”

And he climbs into the bed with her, all 200-some pounds of him, lets himself be held and soothed as he cries into the front of Peggy’s nightgown.

The nurses, by now, know better than to ask any questions.

. . .

 

 

_1990 - Bucharest, Romania_

“Stand down, Widow,” the SHIELD agent who’s been following her gives the order.

Natalia knows she’s well and truly cornered, with no backup, no way out, and no ammo left. This particular agent has been tailing her for three countries, so adept at stealth that there were some uneasy legs of the journey during which Natasha lost track of him.

He’s good; _very_ good, though he uses a bow in favor of more modern weapons.

“You’ll have to kill me,” she tells the agent, standing as straight as she can against the cold cement wall.

She knows there is a team of SHIELD grunts just outside, surrounding the building in case she tries to flee. There is no getting out of this with her life.

“I’m supposed to,” the agent agrees, scrubbing a hand over his blonde hair. “But, the thing is, I don’t think you really want to die.”

Natalia wipes the corner of her mouth with the back of her knuckles. The skin comes away red.

“Death is just another mission completed,” she says, low and breathless.

The chase through the city has left her panting, especially with the collateral damage and shrapnel wounds sustained in the earlier car crash. The SHIELD agent lowers his weapon and steps closer.

“Let me take you to Fury,” he says, and there is no bullshit in his voice, no hidden motive in his shoulders or his mouth. “You’re no good to anyone dead. But that’s your call.”

“My call?”

“Yup,” the agent nods. “You can try to run, take your chances with the forces we both know have this place surrounded on all sides, or you can let me take you back to SHIELD alive.”

Natalia takes a deep breath.

She has no one left with the Agency in Russia—she’s been burned, due to be rubbed out. Living on the run and doing wet work for the mob for cash is a hollow existence, especially when at least five different governments want you dead.

Maybe it would be okay to die, she thinks. Maybe this is the right time. Natasha thinks over everything—the Red Room, Peggy, the blood on her hands—and forces herself to be honest.

“I don’t want to die,” she tells the SHIELD agent with the tired eyes and scruffy, unshaven jaw. “I’ll go with you.”

The agent cracks a smile, and it turns him into a completely different person.

“Awesome. I’ll radio the goons outside to stand down, let HQ know we’re bringing you in.” He makes the call, watching Natalia out one eye, then hangs up and offers, of all things, his hand to shake. “Clint,” he says.

“Natasha,” she replies, giving his callused hand a firm shake.

 

If she is going to try being someone new, she supposes she ought to have a new name. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, I know. I've been crazy busy. 
> 
> BUT! More is on the way. I've got the rest of the story plotted out finally, so there should be less downtime between updates. 
> 
> <3 please let me know if you are enjoying it!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude, featuring Steve Rogers, and his infinite guilt complex.

_2011-?_

From the minute he wakes in the 21st century, Steve Rogers wears the millstone of his grief heavy around his neck.

 _The Loneliest Avenger_ , that’s what they call him when they think he can’t hear. These…these people he’s supposed to work with. They’re so young, and they don’t even realize it. Steve knows that they’re all older than he is physically—he went into a sort of stasis at age 26 under the ice—and maybe the word he’s looking for isn’t younger, it’s newer.

They’re the new, improved humans.

 _Some improvement_ , he thinks bitterly. Everyone in the future is so brusque, so nosy. They think nothing of asking deeply personal questions, flipping them at Steve like tiddlywinks. They’re all protected behind invisible shields made by their little phones and gadgets that they don’t notice anyone else, not really.

Maybe, it occurs to Steve later, they just can’t handle someone else’s emotions. Too messy, too close.

He supposes he doesn’t blame them.

. .

_“Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”_

When Tony Stark utters these words, something in Steve that’s been fraying and pulling at the seams finally comes apart. There’s nobody to come to his defense, not anymore. There used to be people in Steve’s corner ( _that’s not exactly true; there was only ever really one_ ) but now he’s exactly what they call him—an anachronism.

A man out of time.

There’s nobody around to tell Steve that he’s more than the thing he became. So, Steve decides that whatever they think he is, that’s what he is.

(Pretending to be a hero feels just as empty as it sounds.)

. .

Somewhere in all the days that blur together, between all the missions that Steve throws himself into with something a little darker, a little crazier than his old recklessness—sometime during all this, he becomes comfortable with it all.

He starts to let the new, fast, breathless way of life suck him in and pull him under. He learns, slowly, how to use a tiny device to send messages and listen to music. He learns, at the Black Widow’s behest, which clothes he should be wearing so the contrast between himself and everyone else is not so apparent. He listens to albums and watches movies; anything that anyone can think to recommend.

Steve learns, and ignores the lump that is always lodged uncomfortably in his throat.

Steve learns to get along with his teammates. Natasha—Black Widow—is the closest he’s got to a real friend. This isn’t saying much; she’s as inscrutable as a faceless statue, as unreadable as a blank piece of paper.

Next is maybe Clint, who is dry and sarcastic and doesn’t treat Steve like he’s a museum artifact or a simpleton.

Tony Stark is never going to be Steve’s best pal (Steve will never have one of those again, he thinks with a fresh wave of misery) but at least they’re past wanting to rip each other to shreds.

(Some days, though, he still says things that worm under Steve’s skin and make his fingers itch to hit something.)

Steve figures that the best he can do now is keep on serving his country, use the pain, turn it into something he can channel and use.

(He pointedly ignores the fact that the only other time he did this ended with a nosedive into the Atlantic and a seventy year nap.)

He jumps out of planes without parachutes, only nowadays, he doesn’t much care about how he lands.

He keeps on making safe landings anyhow, though it’s not for lack of trying.

. .

_2014 - Swan dive_

Sam Wilson is something of a catalyst in Steve’s life—almost like the calm before the proverbial storm.

A solid man, easy and likable, a soldier; it’s like the universe knew Steve was tired of being surrounded by geniuses and spies, like it decided to throw him a bone for once.

Not two days after Steve meets Sam, everything goes to hell in a goddamn hand-basket.

(Bucky used to use that expression; Steve pretends not to remember that.)

SHIELD is compromised, no one is trustworthy. Steve pairs off with Natasha, though he feels like it might come back to bite him on the ass before all is said and done. Then, Fury is shot. Killed. Steve is no longer the shining, golden figurehead. He escapes the Triskelion by the skin of his teeth, running on an adrenaline high he knows will have a hell of a comedown.

Natasha, for unknown reasons, has decided that she is on Steve’s side for now. She comes along.

Somehow, they end up on the doorstep of easy, likable, solid Sam Wilson. Steve tries to push down the guilt he feels at ambushing such a nice guy. The necessity of the situation outweighs the affront to his personal code.

The assassin on the roof, he was fast—faster than Steve, and maybe even stronger, too. He looked like a ghost story, just like Natasha had said. Steve doesn’t know about ghosts, but he figures they can’t be much harder to beat than aliens or gods.  

 

A little while later, on the bridge, he discovers just how wrong it is possible to be.  

. .

After the lightheaded shock, faint disbelief, Steve throws up.

With what little information Natasha can (or will) give, he fills in the blanks well enough. He’s failed worse than he’d ever dreamed possible.

Not only did he let Bucky fall, but he had accepted it. Didn’t look for him. Didn’t even try.

 _Seventy years is a long time_ , Steve thinks, white-knuckling the porcelain rim of the toilet he’s just dry heaved into for twenty minutes. Seventy years of blood and conditioning. Of memory wipes.

Steve rests his cheek against the edge of the toilet, shame-hot skin pressed against cool white porcelain. He closes his eyes.

. .

When they were young, they loved each other like boys do; scraped knees and grins missing baby teeth, grass-stains and giggles during mass.

When they got a little older, it changed, shifted and grew into something else.

It was always going to be more than what people expected; all that love could not be contained by the confines of an ' _acceptable'_  and ‘ _appropriate_ ’ relationship. They always looked too long, let hands linger where and when they shouldn’t. It was only ever a matter of time.

Steve hopes that he never loses the memory of that first clumsy kiss that passed between them. He wants it burned into his brain tissue, etched into his skin, irremovable.

That day was totally unremarkable in every single other way, just a lazy afternoon in the blink-and-miss-it pleasant stretch of autumn. Bucky was complaining on the couch while Steve sketched him in profile, like he’d done a thousand times before.

Somehow, they’d got a little back-and-forth going, Steve telling Bucky to quit whining and let him draw. Banter turned into wrestling, which maybe they were a little old for, but Steve would take anything that let him get close enough to Bucky to smell the soap and sweat of his skin.

One way or another—Steve can never really be sure of who did what—he ended up on his back on the floor, Bucky on top of him, resting most of his weight on his forearms. There was a moment, a breathy pause where Steve had thought his heart might actually quit on him for good, and then Bucky had touched his nose to Steve’s, teasing.

 _“Okay?”_ He’d said, low and rough and so different.

Steve remembers curling his fist in the fabric of Bucky’s undershirt, yanking hard so he lost his balance. He remembers the way their mouths fit together, awkwardly at first, teeth bumping. He remembers how they shifted, moved a little, and it suddenly became perfect. That hot slide of lips and tongue, and the strangled sound that Bucky made when Steve’s hands roamed under the hem of Bucky’s shirt.

He remembers feeling dizzy with the rush of lust and wish fulfillment, drunk on how much Bucky wanted him. Wanted him _back_.

He remembers the noises coming through the open window, sounds of their neighborhood, and he remembers the noises that Bucky made when Steve got his hands on him.

He remembers the creak of the bedsprings and the hasty shucking of clothing, the way Bucky looked down at him like he was everything; he remembers the _“Jesus, Stevie,”_ whispered reverently.

. .

 

 

_2016_

He has to bite down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood, use that as a surrogate for his desire.

Bucky—whoever he is now, whatever person he has become—doesn’t need to feel pressured to return those feelings.

Even if he did want— _something_ , with Steve, Steve doesn’t know how sure he’d ever be able to be that it wasn’t just Bucky trying to repay Steve for some perceived favor.

So, he bites his tongue and digs his nails into his palms and tries to forget the part of himself who has had the misfortune to be in love with a ghost who pulled a Lazarus.

 

It isn’t easy, but it’s still infinitely better than Bucky being buried and gone, forever, amen.

Steve would take most alternatives to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a little interlude chapter to give some background on the other major relationship in this fic, I hope you enjoy uwu <3


	7. Chapter 7

_1970s-???_

Natalia works with the Soldier several more times, though he never relapses into that strange American personality as he had the first time.

Rather, he is Yasha, a grim, sarcastic Russian with shadowed eyes and longish hair that no longer seems out of place ( _the times, they are a-changing_ , so Natalia has heard.) Yasha teaches Natalia how to be more effective with her shots, to preserve her ammo as long as possible. Bullet thrift, so to speak.

He also comes to her with a way to temporarily fill the gaping maw of herself, the metaphorical wound over which the skin refuses to stretch and close.

She falls into bed with him, the Soldier. It’s during a mission in California, and they’re both dressed like the young people they aren’t.

Natalia finds herself completely wrong about him. She’d imagined that he would fuck her like an animal, hard and punishing. That he’d leave her with bruises, penance paid. Instead, he’s languid, taking his time and curling one sleek metal finger inside her while he laps at her swollen sex. It shouldn’t be possible, that this weapon should be able to make her shake and sweat and curse as she is now.

He reaches up with his right hand to tease Natalia’s nipple, pinching the stiff bud in time with the slow drag of his tongue through her folds up to her clit.

 _“Enough,”_ she rasps in Russian, uncomfortable with feeling so much, with the pleasure that reminds her of dark curls and red lips.

The Soldier pauses to look up at her, still nestled between her thighs. Then, the bastard just smiles and withdraws his fingers and tongue completely.

 _"Should I leave?"_ he asks in a low purr. 

“No,” she gasps, digging her fingers into his shoulders. "No, don't stop."

"Just checking," his smile is the ghost of a charming grin he must have once had, and the Soldier dips his head back down to lap at her before wriggling his finger to brush against her core.

When Natalia is shaking and swearing with the rush of her orgasm, the Soldier tilts her hips up and wraps her legs around his waist so he can slide into her wet, still-spasming cunt.

Natalia wonders, through the haze of desire and frenzied need, who taught him to fuck like this.

She thinks he must have already known, long before HYDRA ever laid hands on him. Each thrust of his hips is slow and aching, and Natalia is so slick and so open, he keeps slipping out every other minute. The blunt, thick head of the Soldier’s cock slides hot against Natalia’s clit when this happens, and she knows she’s going to come again soon.

Perhaps, she thinks in an odd moment of clarity, the Soldier is imagining that she is someone else. It would not be the first time, and Natalia can’t fault him for it.

In the scheme of the tangled, evil mess of wires their lives are, shouldn’t they get some relief anywhere they can find it? Don’t they deserve some small amount of respite?

On the record player, Robert Plant sings about Tolkien’s Middle Earth and offers tribute to his hero in the shape of music.

Natalia feels the Soldier’s hips stutter and then the hot, sticky release of semen. She gives a passing thought to the idea that they’re both like dolls now.

HYDRA has likely taken away his ability to impregnate, just as the Red Room has taken away her ability to carry a child. They are jointed dolls, marionettes on strings, going through the motions and playing at coupling.

Still, the Soldier is almost…tender, afterwards. He brings a cloth to clean her with, then pulls her down to lay her head on his chest, his right arm curled around her to keep her close. Yes, Natalia reaffirms her earlier idea; there was certainly someone else, someone before, when he was a real boy.

. .

_1975 - Haight-Ashbury District, San Francisco_

“Are you going to tell me we can’t keep meeting like this?” Natalia lets the words fall heavy with intent. “Because I really think the record would show that we can.”

Peggy is no less lovely, for all that time and stress have aged her.

She looks tired, so tired, and Natalia feels a small, taut thread of desperation to make Peggy smile like she used to.

“What are you doing here, Widow?” Peggy asks brusquely, and Natalia sighs.

“I came to see you. I’m in town, and I heard you were, too.” She replies, twisting a long lock of strawberry-blonde hair around her fingers.

Peggy looks pained for a second, like she wants to say something, but changes her mind.

“I’d say you were getting sloppy, showing up in the middle of broad daylight like this, but what would be the point?”

Natalia hums in agreement, glancing over her shoulder just to be certain she hasn’t been followed. As if she didn’t discreetly dispatch four separate agents who were tailing her this morning.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go,” Natalia says evenly, meaning it. Peggy bites her lip, and it makes her look so young.

“No—no, don’t. Please, let’s…I’ve a room at—”

“—I know where it is. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

.

“You look like one of those flower children now, you know.” Peggy remarks with a sly curl of her lips.

They’re lying in the hotel bed together, Natalia’s waist-length hair draping over them both and sprawling across the pillows like creeping vines.

“Gotta make sure I don’t stand out in a crowd,” she tells the older woman, sitting up and gathering her hair over one shoulder.

“Wait,” Peggy says suddenly. “Could I—would you let me braid it for you? I always loved braiding the girls’ hair at school. Mine was never long enough.”

Natalia smiles and nods, and Peggy sits up and opens the vee of her legs wide enough for Natalia to sit in the space with her back to Peggy.

“I’ll have to brush it, mind,” Peggy warns lightly, magicking a brush out of somewhere or other.

And they sit there, listening to the sounds of the people outside, not talking at all. Natalia closes her eyes at the light, soothing, repetitive scratch of the brush bristles against her scalp.

When Peggy finally braids it into a thick coppery rope, ties it at the end with an elastic, neither woman makes any attempt to break the position.

Feeling her lover’s arms wrap around her, Natalia leans back into the embrace.

Soft lips find the nape of her neck, and the scent of violets ghosts by.

“We’re running out of spring afternoons, love.” Peggy whispers against Natalia’s skin, making her shiver.

 

And to that, there is no answer. Just silence, and the slide of skin on skin.

. . .

_2012_

Clint is the only person that Natasha has really let in—at least, since Peggy.

That’s why it makes her sick, knowing what Thor’s fucked up brother did to him. Watching Clint under Loki’s control made Natasha’s skin crawl, and she still hasn’t been able to shake the image of his dead eyes from her mind. But somehow worse than that is the way that he flinches at her touch, the way he excuses himself politely from her company.

The way he turns away from her in the bed they used to, more often than not, share.

Brainwashing is something she understands, better than any SHIELD headshrinker, better than most people in the world. Clint knows her past, knows all the dirt and blood caked under her nails, and he still smiles at her like she invented the bow and arrow.

That’s why it throws Natasha for a loop, the way he’s acting now. She’s not good at being the one to reach out; being comforting does not come naturally to her.

That’s why she’s lying wide awake in her bed on her floor of Tony Stark’s ridiculous eyesore of a tower, pretending she doesn’t know that Clint is staring at the ceiling, too. It would be so easy, for anyone else, anyone normal, to just ask. To just offer some kind of something.

Support, Natasha guesses would be the word.

Instead, she keeps her breathing slow and steady, mimicking sleep. She listens as eventually, Clint gets out of bed, pads quietly across the floor and out of the bedroom.

He’ll go up to the roof, probably. That’s where she’d go.

And, for all their differences, Natasha has found that she and Clint are very much alike.

Whether that makes her better or him worse, she isn’t sure.

. .

_2014_

The first time Natasha sees the new Agent 13 in the field, she blinks rapidly, unsure of whether or not her eyes are telling her the truth.

When they refocus, of course, she knows that memory had taken in the familial resemblance, distorted it with stupid wishfulness, and filled in the gaps.

Sharon Carter has blonde hair and the kind of body that is deceptively thin. Her eyes, though, have that same tilt and gleam to them. Dark and clever, like Peggy’s. The mouth is almost the same, too; generous and shaped prettily, though Sharon prefers to leave them bare rather than paint them with red. They share the same little chin, the same high cheekbones.

The same sharpness a woman needs when she’s fighting for a place in a world men still foolishly think of as theirs.

 

The first time Natasha tumbles into bed with Sharon, she wonders idly if this is possibly the most fucked-up thing she’s done; to have an affair with the love of her life’s grandniece.

She puts all thoughts of Peggy aside, though, busying herself with the task of mapping out the new terrain beneath her; the lean muscle and soft, slight curves. Somehow, foreplay evolves into a game of light orgasm denial that leaves Natasha feeling like her whole body is on fire on the inside. Sharon is a spitfire, rough and intense. Natasha is left breathless by the end of the night.

“Thought you were with Barton,” Sharon asks amiably, sprawled in a heap on the rumpled sheets next to Natasha.

“Is that a problem?” She counters, lifting one eyebrow.

“Doesn’t need to be, no.” Sharon replies easily, rolling over onto her side. “I’m guessing he doesn’t mind?”

Natasha actually laughs out loud.

“Barton is about as low-maintenance as they come. He doesn’t give a shit what I do, as long as I bring him home whatever greasy takeout he’s craving.”

Sharon grins. “My kind of man,” she hums, stretching her arms and arching her back.

“Thought you didn’t go for men,” Natasha purrs, reaching for Sharon, tracing the ridges of her spine. “I pretty much threw Rogers at you, and you didn’t bite.”

Sharon snorts. “I don’t, usually. And shockingly, tall, heroic, and totally in love with someone else _isn’t_ actually my type.”

“You caught that too, huh?” Natasha shakes her head, sighing. “And he thinks he’s been so subtle.”

Sharon’s answering laughter rings out in the room, full and rich. In profile, in the dim light, she reminds Natasha achingly of Peggy.

“The only person _less_ subtle than Rogers is Stark,” Sharon says, grinning. Then, the smile fades a little, and she remembers. “How is he, by the way? Last I heard, he was chasing down ghost leads with that Wilson guy.”

Natasha huffs a laugh. “He’s somewhere in Europe, burning down rogue HYDRA factions and refusing to accept that he’s in love with a dead man.”

“Wow, I sure hope you’re not this kind and compassionate when you talk to Rogers about this shit,” Sharon raises her eyebrows.

Natasha takes the opportunity to poke Sharon in the side, right where she’s ticklish.

“Of course not,” she answers primly. “I’m not a monster. Have you seen Rogers’ sad face? On par with puppies at the shelter.”

“ _Ugh_. True,” Sharon agrees, curling her lip. “Poor Wilson, he probably has to see that face every day.”

Natasha offers up a silent apology to Sam Wilson, wherever he is; no one should have to bear the weight of Steve Rogers’ sorrowful eyes on their own.

“Let’s get food,” she says suddenly, sitting up in Sharon’s bed, fully naked. “I’ll buy. We can answer the door in panties so the delivery guy gets nervous and forgets to ask for the money.”

“You’ve done that before, haven’t you.” Sharon sighs, fighting a smile. “I’m not even surprised.”

 

Natasha is grateful, more than anyone could know, for the nights like this one. Nights where she is allowed to be, for all intents and purposes, a normal woman who has sex and eats takeout in her underwear and laughs with her lover at late-night television’s paltry offerings. 

She is grateful for the chance to pretend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a few more to go! 
> 
> I've got the end written, and I'm really anxious to post it. Big plot-twist sort of idea that hasn't left my head. 
> 
> I hope you like! <3 sorry for such a gap between posts :(


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlude - Barnes

_2016 Interlude - Barnes_

Bucky can’t stand the way Steve still flinches around him.

The way Steve still looks at him like he’s afraid Bucky will vanish into thin air.

They’re on the run, now, no thanks to Captain Reckless—Steve is still too stubborn, too willing to throw himself in front of the firing squad in Bucky’s place.

In a safe-house in upstate New York (a place that may as well be another country, for how different it is from the city) Bucky watches Steve wrap his busted wrist at the too-small kitchen table.

And the memories come rushing back, struggling to the surface like drowning men—memories from when Steve was a slip of a thing and covered in bruises and scrapes. Bucky remembers fussing over Steve back then, among other things.

He remembers, if he is honest with himself, quite a lot.

They were friends, yes. But Bucky almost wants to laugh at the fact that everyone just accepts ‘friendship’ as the reason Steve has completely abandoned his duties and gone AWOL with the rest of SHIELD on his tail.

The only thing Steve would ever turn his back on his country to protect, and it’s just his old buddy? His pal from way-back-when?

Bucky watches Steve, traces the angle of Steve’s two-weeks’ stubbled jaw with his eyes, and decides he’s had enough

“You don’t have to walk on eggshells with me, Steve.”

And Steve, oblivious as ever, he looks up with wide eyes like he’s been caught doing something bad.

“I’m—I just don’t know how to be,” Steve says brokenly, shoulders slumping, and Bucky kicks himself for being the cause of that doubt.

“It ain’t difficult, Rogers. Just be you, with me.” Bucky says, before he can think better of it.

Because he’s selfish, too.

He wants to be touched and looked at and longed for, the way Steve used to touch him and look at him and long for him. He wants it back, that thing they used to have between them, and he _knows_ Steve still wants it. He knows Steve feels guilty for wanting it, and ain’t _that_ a fuckin’ trip.

Steve’s ears go red and he looks away, rubbing the back of his neck with his bandaged hand.

“I don’t—”

“Bullshit,” Bucky counters, stepping over the threshold all the way into the cramped kitchen. “Tell me you don’t think about it. Tell me you don’t look at me and remember how—”

“—Dammit, Buck.” Steve hisses, looking pained. “Of _course_ I think about it. Of course I want it. I just—”

“—You just need to stop being so damn noble. Remember who started it.”

And Bucky knows Steve is remembering, from the way his lips part and his eyes glaze, that summer afternoon on the sofa a lifetime ago. The sweaty fumbling and then the kiss. For Bucky, in the still-repairing mental timeline of his life, there are only two periods of time.

Before that kiss, and after.

(Maybe three periods, he amends; before, during, and after. Without.)

Crowding Steve’s space, careful and slow so as not to spook him, Bucky kneels at Steve’s feet and rests his hands on Steve’s solid thighs.

“Okay?” he asks, just like he’d asked when he was still whole, still wearing the easy skin of the man he once was.

And then—the chair goes crashing haphazardly to the floor. Bucky finds himself being hauled up and crushed against the peeling wallpaper, being kissed by Steve for the first time in this life.

“God, I missed this,” Steve pants against Bucky’s mouth, stubble scraping Bucky’s cheek. “Missed you, Buck.”

Bucky tips his head back a little so that Steve can suck marks into his throat, leave a trail of beard-burn on his skin.

“Gonna give me some road rash, Cap?” he taunts, arching his back and groaning when he feels Steve’s teeth.

Steve growls, slams his hips against Bucky’s. Plaster crumbs from the ill-maintained ceiling snow down on them.

“Not Cap,” he pins Bucky to the wall with his huge body. “Not anymore. Not with you.”

Fair enough, Bucky thinks, before he shuts up and his mind gives over to the animal urge completely.

It’s been a long time since either of them had some release, and words can only do so much. 

.

It’s fast and rough and desperate, the first time.

The second time, it’s tender and aching. There are hushed words and there are tears. Apologies that don’t need saying, but still get said.

The third time is hurried, because they have to leave for the next safe-house.

.

Bucky feels like he can breathe a little bit easier now, so, at least there's that. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :O 
> 
> I couldn't not, what with the release of the TRAILER THAT RUINED MY LIFE


	9. Chapter 9

_1983 - SHIELD Headquarters_

As soon as she opens the door to her office, Peggy knows something is wrong.

There’s not a single paper out of place, no window cracked or drawer left open. Her chair is even in the same position as it was when she left, hours ago.

Still, there’s a tingling running up her spine that has her reaching for her sidearm and keeping her steps quiet and measured.

Then, there’s movement.

A figure, tall and clad in black. Obviously male, though his hair is long and unkempt, something on his person is glinting in the light from the streetlamp that comes through the window. _His arm_ , she realizes, biting her lips so as not to gasp.

The man’s arm is entirely metal, comprised of shifting, interlocking plates, bearing a red star on the bicep.

Peggy knows who this bogeyman is; yes, she does.

He’s seen her, she knows. He does not leave witnesses, she knows. Still, she clears her throat softly. His head whips around, eyes piercing through the dark of the room. Peggy holds her weapon steady, and speaks in a calm, clear voice.

“Who do you work for?”

The man, the Winter Soldier, stands deadly still. After several long, impossibly tense moments, he speaks in a voice that sounds like rusted machinery and hopelessness.

“Where is Steve?”

Peggy steps backward as though his words have physical impact. Struggling to maintain some kind of rapport with the Soldier, she raises one hand.

“I’m going to turn the light on, is that alright?” she asks.

The Soldier hesitates, then nods once. The lights flicker on, and Peggy thinks that if she were made of weaker stuff, she might be sick.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says faintly, still not lowering her gun.

The Soldier, haggard and haunted and unshaven though he may be, is indisputably James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th.

He looks…afraid. Like he thinks Peggy might hurt him. It would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreakingly sad. He could likely kill her in less than three seconds in forty different ways, and he’s afraid of her.

“You know where they’re keeping him?” the Soldier asks, eyes flicking nervously from the window to the door to Peggy’s face. “Steve?”

Where does Peggy even begin? What is she supposed to do here and now?

Protocol would have her shooting him to take alive. Common sense would see her shooting to kill.

For the first time in a very long time, though, Peggy Carter is at a total loss.

“Darling, Steve is—” she begins, but there are sudden loud footsteps down the hall, likely security storming the floor.

The Soldier startles, the softness and the fear all but vanishing from his face. In their place, there is a blankness. His eyes are dead, and he stares through her, rather than at her. He raises his gun, but seemingly changes his mind.

Opening the window, he gives Peggy one last look before pushing off over the ledge.

The agents arrive just seconds later, huffing and puffing and asking Peggy if she’s alright, if she needs something for the shock.

She curses them out and slams the door of her office in their stupid, young faces.

Only after she hears their mutters and the heels of their leather shoes clacking away down the hall to the elevator—only then does Peggy clutch the edge of her desk with white knuckles and a sob caught in her throat that never makes it all the way out.

Peggy is grateful, at least, that Steve isn’t here to see what they’ve done to his Bucky.

Small mercies, and all.

Peggy is frustrated, too, that Steve isn’t here. Steve could march into any facility with his shield and his disregard for orders when it came to Barnes, could fix this the way that Peggy is suddenly too old, too weak to.

 

It’s a scotch night; from the bottle, no need to dirty a glass.

. .

_1995_

Peggy hasn’t seen alias Black Widow in years.

It’s better this way, she supposes. What could they say to each other now? Apart from _I’m sorry._ Apart from _if only_.

Last Peggy’d heard, she’d turned SHIELD, of all things. Working with a team under Fury’s direct orders to take out rogue terrorist cells and obtain highly sensitive information.

Last Peggy’d heard, she was going by Natasha, partnered with a young operative known as Hawkeye. One of Phil Coulson’s special picks.

( _Phil_. Peggy chuckles not unkindly when she thinks of little Phil Coulson, sweet as can be and determined not to be starstruck by her when they’d first been introduced. He’s proven his salt ten times over since then, but she’ll never forget the first time she knew he was worth more than his fellow recruits.

He’d told her it was an honor to meet her, and she’d asked, frankly, if that was because she had worked so closely with Captain Rogers.

Phil Coulson, all of twenty-three years old, had shaken his head vehemently and said “You’re kidding, right? You trained Captain America, and you were an agent yourself, not to mention you were the head of SHIELD. Excuse my French, ma’am, but anyone who thinks of you and only thinks ‘Captain America’s sweetheart’ is a fucking moron.”

Peggy had laughed delightedly and asked Phil to call her by her first name.)

Peggy’s children are long gone, with lives and families of their own now.

John, her former husband, lives in Florida with his new wife. He looks happier than he has in years, and Peggy is glad of that. Sometimes, he even sends postcards.

When Peggy looks at the backs of her hands, she sometimes forgets they belong to her.

She panics a little, wondering what’s happened, how she’s wound up trapped in the withered body of an old woman. She looks at other people her age and wonder if they have moments like that, if they too feel cheated of youth. Perhaps it’s just Peggy.

Just Peggy who can’t come to grips with growing older, weaker.

She hopes that Natalia—Natasha, whoever she is now, is doing something with the information Peggy left her, regarding the investigation into an assassin utilized by HYDRA.

She keeps hoping, too, that she’ll remember exactly why it is so important that Natasha find this assassin.

All Peggy can remember now is the haunted look in the man’s eyes when he lowered his weapon and jumped out of her office window into the night.

. . .

_2015_

“This is the third night in a row you’ve been up digging through files, Nat. What’s going on?”

Clint stands in the kitchen doorway in Hulk-print pajama bottoms, leaning against the frame and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Natasha groans and puts down the manila file folder she’s holding to turn and face him.

“It’s for Steve.” she says, giving a half-truth in favor of an outright lie. “I’m helping him track Barnes.”

Clint snorts and shuffles over to the table to pull up a chair.

“But that’s not all of it, right?” he raises a knowing eyebrow, and Natasha curses the fact that she chooses to cohabit with another former intelligence agent.

“Look,” Clint says, catching her eye and holding steadily. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But…if I can help, you should let me.”

Natasha closes her eyes and brings her fingers up to lightly press against the bridge of her nose. Clint Barton is as good a man as there could ever be, and Natasha owes him far more than she can ever give.

Perhaps, she decides, she can give him this, and hope that it will start to even the score.

“This isn’t Barnes’ file.” she tells him, voice and face carefully blank. “It’s mine. My real file, I mean. Not the one SHIELD has.”

Clint cocks his head as if to say ‘go on.’ She does.

“I wonder how many times a person can say ‘I’m not who you think I am’ and still have friends,” Natasha laughs, low and humorless.

Clint reaches across the table to take her hand.

“Nat…whatever’s in those files that you think is gonna make me stop—just forget it, okay?” he’s casual; relaxed as ever.

He is also, Natasha knows, completely adamant.

“The people who made Barnes into the Soldier…they made me into the Widow.” Natasha says, then takes a deep breath before continuing. “It’s just that everyone’s got the timeline mixed up. I was training in the Red Room while Barnes was still in Brooklyn.”

Clint says nothing, his face gives away nothing; just the slight widening of his eyes is all Natasha has to be sure that he’s heard what she said.

“I was born in 1930, Barton. I’m—” Natasha falters, unsure of herself and uncomfortable in her skin. “Whatever formula they tried to copy off the one that Steve had, they gave it to me when I graduated training.”

There’s a long pause. Water drips slow and quiet from the faucet, like a metronome. Clint’s thumb brushes over the back of Natasha’s hand, and she lets go of a breath she hadn’t meant to hold.

“Who else knows about this? About you?” he asks, turning her hand over in his so he can massage the joints, push his thumbs into the sore muscles of her palm.

“Nobody—well,” she amends, remembering the satin-lined casket and the tasteful floral arrangements a few months ago. “Not anymore. Just you.”

“Did you kill the people who knew?” Clint asks, no judgment or fear or worry in his tone.

Natasha shakes her head, hissing sharply when Clint’s thumb presses into a particularly tense place at her wrist. It feels good to let things out sometimes, she thinks.

“Not all of them—only one SHIELD member ever knew, and she’s…she died. Old age.”

Clint stops massaging her hand. As usual, he is far more perceptive than anyone knows. He’s second only to her.

There’s a delicate moment, and it could go a thousand ways, depending on what Clint says next. A hundred thoughts cross his mind, Natasha can tell.

“So what you’re telling me,” he says slowly, “is that not only are you an undocumented supersoldier, but that you also stole Captain America’s girl while he was taking an ice nap for seventy years?”

The corners of Clint’s mouth twitch, and the glint is back in his eye, and Natasha feels her own smile threatening to unfurl.

“Only you would put it like that, Barton.” she rolls her eyes, then grins. “I also slept with Barnes on a few missions. Guess I stole Captain America’s girl and his guy.”

There's a beat, then Clint throws his head back and howls with laughter, palm slapping the table.

When he comes back to himself, wiping at his eyes and giggling a little, he fixes her with a soft look.

“You know you can trust me with this, right?” he asks gently, earnestly.

Natasha does know it.

“Wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t,” she answers, then rolls her neck until it cracks satisfyingly. “Hey, since we’re both up, we should watch a movie.”

Clint’s smile turns into a leer. “Watch a movie, or ‘watch a movie’?” he does air-quotes to specify exactly what he means.

Natasha rewards him with a real laugh, full and loud and not just a huff or a chuckle.

“Depends on the movie you pick,” she winks, and together they make their way into the living room to possibly watch a movie.

Or not.

 

When they're back in bed, in the safe darkness of the room they share, Natasha tells Clint about Peggy. It hurts, like picking a scab, but like a scab that needs to come off. Sometimes wounds need to breathe so they can heal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more! 
> 
> The final chapter will be longer, I have a lot of loose ends to tie up, and I'm still deciding on whether I want it to end on a really hopeful note, or a really sad one with only a little hope. If anyone has any opinion on the matter, please share! 
> 
> <3 I love you all for reading, even though this is a pretty obscure pairing for the most part, and the timeline is weird, it's been a really awesome experience writing it and challenging myself to not just write fluff. Thank you for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me apologize for the long hiatus. Let me apologize with this chapter, AND with an epilogue to come after.

_2016 - Edge of the World_

 

The fight between Iron-Man’s half of the SHIELD family and Steve’s is dirty and raw.

Bucky ascends to that pure white blank state of a perfect fighter, gladly uses his Soviet left arm to bloody the faces of people Steve once called ‘friends.’ He knows he would do much worse for Steve.

But then it’s down to Stark and Steve, and Steve hesitates for a split-second, and Stark doesn’t. Everything stops for one tiny crystal fragment of time, a lens focused solely on the beam of blue that shoots from the Iron-Man suit’s palm. On the point of contact between the beam and the star on Steve’s chest.

Bucky is frozen where he stands, powerless in this moment like he has never been before. Steve’s body flies backward and into the concrete wall of the empty parking garage. He does not get up.

Bucky’s pure white goes red, and he feels it like his soul is tearing in half, and he’s going to kill Tony Stark. Obliterate him. Wipe him from the plane of existence.

He disables the Iron-Man suit with an electrical current, then he pins Stark to the wall. There is a flash of fear, bright and sharp, in Tony Stark’s dark eyes.

And Bucky knows that Stark is afraid of him because he is the Soldier; but Bucky is not the Soldier right now, not even a little. He thinks he has never been more himself than in this moment.

“You fucker,” he hisses, drawing his metal arm back and letting it fly, over and over. Contact with Stark’s jaw and nose and mouth. “You selfish, stupid fucking kid.”

Each blow that lands is for all the things Bucky wants to tell Steve, all the things they deserved and didn’t get. All the things they’ve done for each other.

A small hand on his arm stills Bucky’s hand, and he whips around to see Natasha, stone-faced and silent.

“That’s enough, Barnes. You don’t want to do this.” she says with certainty.

Bucky catalogues the injuries he’s made to Stark. The man is unconscious, face swollen and grotesque. Part of Bucky is horrified at what he has done, but the other part still bays for blood, for a finished job.

“I’ll handle this,” Natasha stares hard up at Bucky, frowning a little. “There’s a car waiting behind the emergency exit, Barton’s driving. Take Rogers and get the fuck out of here.”

Nodding dazedly, Bucky staggers over to where Steve’s body lies, and falls to his knees.

“Steve,” he strips his glove from his right hand, pats his lover on the cheek gently. “Steve, c’mon. Wake up, you asshole.”

But Steve isn’t moving. Bucky wants to howl. Wants to let out the ragged, desperate sound that’s clawing at his throat.

He shifts over carefully so he can take Steve’s helmet off and rest Steve’s head on his lap.

There’s a little trickle of blackish blood from Steve’s nostrils, and his lip is badly split. His eyes are closed.

He’s still breathing.

There’s still one more chance for Bucky to pull Steve out of the fire, out of the deep water. Gritting his teeth, Bucky stands and lifts all 220 pounds of unconscious Captain America, carries him like a bride out of the parking garage.

True to Natasha’s word, Barton is waiting in an inconspicuous suburban family SUV, idling and looking out the window like he’s been expecting this exact outcome.

Bucky lays Steve in the back, then climbs in too.

“Where can we go?” he rasps, catching Barton’s eye in the rearview.

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” Barton replies, shifting the vehicle into drive with a dry chuckle. “But there’s an emergency med kit thrown together for people of yours and Steve’s, ah, particular physiology. Under the seat.”

Bucky gropes blindly until he feels the pack, unzipping it frantically and taking stock of its contents.

Anesthetic, specifically formulated to correspond with genetically-enhanced biology. Iodine and alcohol. Sutures. Things for an IV, once they get where they’re going, presumably. Painkillers, again formulated for supersoldiers. A sling. A few splints in varying sizes. Clean needles. Tubing.

Bucky jams the emergency anesthetic into Steve’s arm, wincing as he does it.

Steve stirs a little, tries to burrow closer to Bucky’s lap. Some of the bruising on visible areas of skin has started to fade already. Bucky takes a deep breath and tells himself that this is a good sign.

He zips the kit back up and tucks it into the pocket of the seat in front of him, guides Steve’s head onto his lap, and looks out the window.

They’re out of the city somehow, already on the interstate heading towards a big question mark.

Exhausted as he is, Bucky can’t bring himself to close his eyes. This is his final mission, keeping watch over Steve Rogers while his broken body diligently begins to reassemble.

The endless passing pines and mountains are soothing, though, and Barton listens to music that’s sad and easy on the ears, the singer’s voice deep and without ornament.

_Graceless; is there a powder to erase this? Is it dissolvable and tasteless?_

It’s strange, but the further away from New York City they get, the less tightness Bucky feels in his chest, the less tangled stabbing he feels in his gut.

_Try, but I’m gone, through the glass again; just come and find me. God loves everybody, don’t remind me…_

He breathes in time with the rising and falling of Steve’s chest. He watches the exit signs blur past, watches the way Steve’s hand twitches like he’s trying to grab something. Bucky reaches over and threads his fingers through Steve’s. Faintly, barely, there is a squeeze in return.

_Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen._

  
. .

When Steve is tucked up in the freshly-prepared bed in the house by the cove, Bucky does a full perimeter check.

The place has a lot of work needs to be done, he notes, but the idea of a project to keep busy doesn’t trouble Bucky too much. He finds he likes the idea of a fixer-upper.

The dresser drawers are full of clothes in the right sizes, all soft, plain t-shirts and brand new denim. There’s a pair of boxer-briefs sporting a pattern of little star-spangled shields, and Bucky snorts aloud.

When he finishes his sweep of the ground level, he finds a note tucked up into the fireplace, like whoever left it had known he would check for hidden explosives or bugs up there.

_I knew you’d like the house._   
_You’ll be safe there. Both of you._   
_Tell S. to enjoy retirement._

_p.s. I mean it._

Bucky isn’t sure what to do with the surge of emotions he’s feeling suddenly, clutching at the soot-smudged paper tightly. Desperate for something to occupy his mind, he decides to grab a book from the well-stocked shelf and read to Steve while he sleeps off the last of his injuries.

Out the window, gulls chatter and soar. The sun peeks out from behind a fat, white cloud.

Bucky Barnes reads aloud from The Hobbit and holds his sweetheart’s hand.

. . .

_2016 - 3 months after_

“I already told you, sir,” Natasha has never been able to bring herself to say ‘sir’ and be wholly un-sarcastic. “Rogers was dead. Barnes took his body and fled in a stolen vehicle. I stayed with Stark until help arrived.”

She spares a passing thought to Tony Stark, who’d woken in his hospital bed three days after the fight with wild eyes and panicked breath, demanding to know if he’d killed Steve.

“You are aware,” government so-and-so number one says gravely, “that no one, and I mean no one, has been able to find so much as a goddamned bread crumb of information about Barnes’ whereabouts?”

Natasha tilts her head, stares at the old white man in the expensive, boring suit. She doesn’t blink. This man is, on paper, very important. Natasha imagines all the ways she could kill him.

“He’s in the wind, sir.” she answers evenly, reaching to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “And anyhow, Captain America’s shield was recovered from the parking garage after the fact. That’s what your people were concerned about, right? Just seal this file, sir. Trust me, you’ll sleep better.”

The man in the suit sighs, glares at Natasha. Opens his mouth and shuts it several times. His lips are thin and flesh-colored.

“You’re dismissed, Agent Romanoff. Report to Coulson tomorrow at 08:00.”

“Gee, thanks, sir,” Natasha can’t help muttering under her breath as she walks out of his top-floor office, boot heels clicking on luxury flooring.

On the elevator ride down, she thinks about the old house by the sea, the one she’d selected and paid for herself. White clapboard, big and in need of a lot of extra love.

The last picture she saw of it was sent to her private phone from a blocked, untraceable number; the siding had been replaced, and the original windows refurbished. In the picture, there’s a man on the roof pulling up bad shingles. It’s too blurry to say, but one of the man’s arms looks to be made of metal.

Leaning her head back against the glass wall of the elevator, Natasha lets her eyes close, just for a few seconds.

When the doors open on the ground floor, she thinks about smiling.

. . .

_2017 - Bar Harbor, Maine_

  
“Penny for your thoughts, doll?”

That old familiar drawl, though it has picked up some gravel on the long road to here and now, sets Steve’s chest to aching. He shakes himself out of the strange haze of his thoughts so he can turn and smile at the man leaning over the kitchen counter.   
Their kitchen counter, brand new tops and cabinets and everything.

Bucky’s standing there, in his dirty white undershirt and beat-up jeans, better and more real than any of Steve’s most fevered dreams. The circles under his eyes have faded to almost nothing, now that they’re both sure that no one’s coming for them. Not anymore.

“S’nothin’,” he says softly, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck.

For some reason, it still feels new and tender sometimes, between the two of them.

(Lord knows it really, really isn’t; this weatherbeaten, nail-tough, battle-scarred love of theirs.)

“Swear to god, Rogers, after the things we’ve done, you’d think you’d blush a little less easy.” Bucky growls, stalking over to the chair where Steve is sitting and blushing. He crowds into Steve’s space, takes Steve’s face in his hands and leans down for a kiss that scrapes and tastes of sweat and lemonade.

Though he knows Bucky only intended it to be one kiss, singular, stopping eludes them, and they neck for a long time, awkward though the position is.

When they do finally break for air, Bucky’s eyes are glassy and lust-dark, his lips red.

“I gotta go finish the last bit of the deck before noon,” he rasps, thumb stroking over Steve’s jaw.

“So go finish it, Buck.” Steve says, though his eyes are already closing because he knows what comes next.

Sure enough, he is kissed again. And again. Thoroughly, and with intent.

It leads—as these things so often do, nowadays—to the hasty shucking of clothing in a trail leading to their bedroom on the second floor. There’s no air conditioning in their house, not yet, and the many fans strategically placed around prove to be tricky obstacles.

One fan gets knocked over in the heat of the moment, though neither man makes any moves to right it. They’re too busy tasting the sweat of each other’s skin.

They shove at each other, bite and grip too hard; they’re built to take much worse. Steve doesn’t mind when Bucky sinks his teeth in, leaves scratches on his back. He only wishes the marks stayed on him a little longer than they do.

Bucky likes when Steve gives him beard-burn, though it’s too hot and humid in the summer for Steve to wear the beard. He’ll grow it again when the chill comes back and the last of the sticky heat has gone til next year.

Too frantic for anything else, they rut against each other, run their hands all over each other’s bodies, gasp at the slide of their cocks together.

They trade breathless, bruising kisses until Bucky shudders and bites off a moan and comes all over them both. Steve rocks his hips into Bucky’s, into the sticky mess on his stomach, and comes too.

  
After they’ve wiped off, they lie in bed on top of the thin summer quilt, steadying their breathing and ghosting fingers over skin.

“So,” Steve aims for casual, though he’s still a little hoarse. “How about that deck?”

He gets the response he’s hoping for; Bucky snorts and smacks him soundly on the ass.

“Too late for that, pal.” Bucky slides his hand up the back of Steve’s thigh, fingers barely grazing the cleft of his ass. “This day is shot for anything other than fucking and complaining about the heat.”

Steve laughs out loud, but it trails off into a little groan when Bucky takes hold of Steve’s hand, brings it to his mouth, and sucks on Steve’s finger.

“Somethin’ funny, baby doll?” Bucky smirks, and Steve feels the blood rushing back to fill his cock. Bucky notices, grinning. “Look, Stevie, even your prick agrees with me.”

Steve can’t argue with that, nor can he argue with the promise of Bucky’s tongue and his hands and a day spent in bed.

Steve ends up on his knees with Bucky nestled close behind him, tonguing his hole with one hand reaching around to idly stroke Steve’s cock. It’s languid and dirty and so, so good, and Steve remembers that they’re in their own house and have no close neighbors, and that he can make as much damn noise as he pleases.

.

When he’d recovered from the injuries sustained in the fight with Stark, Steve had shocked Bucky with how unconcerned he was about leaving a Captain America-shaped void in the heart of the people.

“You don’t have to—I’d never ask you to give it up, Steve,” Bucky had said, letting his gaze skitter away, worrying the flesh of his lower lip with his teeth. “New York is your home.”

Steve had frowned at first, because why didn’t Bucky see it? Even after everything?

Then, he’d sighed, closed his eyes. When he opened them, he made sure to catch Bucky’s gaze and hold it.

“Buck…” he’d tried not to be too earnest; Natasha has always told him it’s one of his faults.

So, he went on to trip over the words as they spilled from him; nearly a century’s worth of longing and heartache. He’d told Bucky that it wasn’t that New York was home; New York and the city and even the hallowed ground of Brooklyn were all just screens for memories to be projected upon. Staying in the city had made Steve feel close to Bucky, made the staggering, sharp pain of his absence something he could at least live with.

Bucky had been biting his lip again, eyes huge and round. The corners of his mouth were pushed down, the way they had always done when Bucky was trying his damnedest not to cry. Something about Bucky trying not to cry then, in that moment, made Steve wonder what he’d done wrong all those years past. How had Bucky never known what he’d meant to Steve?

“Now I’ve got you back…” Steve had scrubbed a hand over his face, had shaken his head. Suddenly, he’d felt choked up, too. “Hell, Buck. I don’t need New York or Brooklyn or any of that. I’d live with you behind a dumpster in Jersey if that was the only way.”

Bucky had looked away, eyes wet; he’d fought a grin that had won out, watery though it was.

“Bite your tongue, Rogers.” he’d said, voice hoarse and thick with emotion. Then, muttering to himself, he’d thrown his hands up. “A dumpster in Jersey, he says. You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

“Naw,” Steve had replied, wiping his own leaking eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m lucky you’re blind as a bat.”

“I could shoot at a marshmallow off the top of your stupid head from space and not miss, pal. You’re the one’s got vision problems.” Bucky had fired back, just before coming round the other side of the table to tangle Steve up in a kiss that made Steve’s fingers curl into the soft cotton of Bucky’s shirt and his toes curl way down in his socks.

And then it was easy between them, like the heavy, dour weight of grief and uncertainty and sacrifice had finally lifted. That was the day Steve felt something yawn and stretch in his chest, like he could put the stage persona away for good, let Steve Rogers step out and face the sunlight.

That night, they slept nearly sixteen hours.

When they finally woke, rubbing at their eyes and dazedly remembering where they were, Bucky had pounced on Steve, tackled him back into the pillows and enthusiastically resumed their relearning of each others’ bodies.

It was, in a way, like things coming full circle.

  
. . .

 

_2017  - New Horizons_

 

“You sure you want to go through with this?” Director Coulson is giving Natasha one more chance to back out, and she isn’t offended.

Used to be, she’d already have skipped town in the face of such a towering, herculean task.

Now, though…the mantle that sat like a crown of thorns on Steve’s head in the end looks more to Natasha something like atonement.

She’s doing this for her friends, for two men who’ve seen enough bad to last two lifetimes, who’ve been at the beck and call of various governments and agencies, no more than guns to be fired in the name of foggy, relative truths.

Two men who have given their lives to their country when all they want is to give their lives to each other. Natasha thinks they deserve at least the opportunity to do that.

She’s also doing this for Peggy; beautiful, iron-forged knight in armor that she was. She is sacrificing what smoldering remains are left of her private life, taking a torch to her intricate web and lighting it up.

She’s leaving behind her spy-life in the shadows to step into the light. It doesn’t burn like she once thought it would; rather, it’s warm, soaking into her winter-brittle bones and curling pleasantly through her icy blood.

But more than all that, Natasha is doing this for herself.

For the chance to leave a legacy behind that isn’t stained with blood and streaked with ash. For the little girl who had no parents anymore, who could have used a shield and an infallible hero.

Because a lifetime of red can’t be wiped clean, not completely—but maybe, just maybe, if it’s flanked on either side by white and by blue, she can learn to accept that it is a natural part of her.

When it stands beside those other colors, that red is more than just a reminder of who she used to be.

Natasha meets Coulson’s eyes across the desk and does not blink. Sitting up straight, setting her jaw and squaring her shoulders, she readies herself to dive from this precipice.

“I’m ready, sir. Just tell me what to do.”

.

The first attack on the city of a large scale since Steve Rogers made a quiet and effective escape out of the public eye and into the wind, bystanders snap pictures on their phones of someone considerably smaller dressed in Captain America’s colors, wielding his shield.

Small, fast, impossibly strong and decidedly female, the imposter-Cap easily takes control of the situation, directing the other Avengers and putting a quick stop to the attack.

When the not-Cap takes off her helmet, someone gets a picture which ends up plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Natasha Romanoff, Captain America.

.

Soon after, Natasha gets a letter with no return address, in a plain envelope with a few stamps.

The enclosed note is written by two people; one with the neat, blocky handwriting of a cartoonist, the other slanting and narrow.

The first half: B _lue suits you. Come visit us if you get a spare moment to breathe. We’d love to have you. —S_

The second: **And here I thought there was no one better for the star-spangled getup than Stevie. You looked good out there, with the shield. I’ve never seen you favor defensive tactics like that. But like the old man said, come visit. Bring Clint and Sam. —James**

Natasha smiles to herself, folding the note and replacing it in the envelope.

She’s been smiling more; part of the job. It’s easier than she’d thought it would be.

Maybe she’ll go up to visit Steve and Bucky in a month or two, just in time for Steve’s birthday. The little smile on her face turns into a wide grin when she thinks about showing up with blonde hair, in a grandpa outfit like Steve used to wear.

“What’s got you so happy, Captain Widow?” Clint shuffles in, hand rummaging around in a bag of Cheetos.

“Thinking we should take a vacation for the Fourth of July,” she answers, tucking the letter into her pocket.

“You have to lead the parade,” Clint snorts.

 

Sighing, Natasha scraps that plan. Maybe after the Fourth, then. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read this, though it isn't a very popular fic (I didn't imagine it would be) it is my favorite of my own work. I wanted to give them a happyish ending, though I know it would have probably been more powerful to make it tragic and hollow. 
> 
> The epilogue will be fluffy and angsty and contain scenes from the oft-mentioned hotel in Prague with Peggy and Natasha. 
> 
> THANK YOU ALL AGAIN <3
> 
> p.s. lyrics from Clint's car-driving music taken from The National's incredible heartbreaker of a song, Graceless.


	11. Epilogue.

  
When Natasha does finally tell Steve all about her, about Peggy, she is met with a reaction she did not expect.

Steve pulls her into a hug, fierce and tight and cracking several vertebrae. They stand in his kitchen in the house in Bar Harbor, holding each other, for a long time. When he pulls back, Natasha can see that Steve’s eyes are wet and red, and she feels her own are not as dry as she’d like.

“Jesus, Romanoff, you could have said,” he croaks, smile weak but gaining wattage by the second.

In no version of events that she has imagined, no possible scenario she has catalogued, did Natasha think that it could turn out like this. She’d pictured yelling, anger; maybe cold silence and neatly severed ties.

Instead, she gets a warm, tender kiss on the mouth that isn’t about either of them. It is, though, about love.

“It makes me real damn glad,” Steve says, holding her hands in his much larger ones. “I dunno…knowing that you two were…I can’t think how to phrase it. Glad you knew her? That she knew you? It makes me feel closer to both of you.”

Natasha is, she realizes with mortification, choked up. She says nothing, instead opting to squeeze Steve’s hands as tight as she can.

When the overwhelming urge to cry passes, Natasha tilts her head up to look Steve in the eyes.

“Which one of us do you think Peggy would say is the better Captain America?” she asks, smirk widening into a sly grin.

And it says something strange and wonderful and surreal about Natasha’s life that Steve just throws his head back and cackles.

Amidst the throes of laughter, Barnes pokes his head around the doorway.

“If you two punks are done in here, clear out. Me n’ Sam are on dinner duty.”

Natasha can’t help feeling warm when she catches sight of Steve’s expression when he looks at Barnes. She knows no one has seen him look like this since coming out of the ice, not until now.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve rolls his eyes fondly at Barnes “we’re going. We can take the dogs to the beach.”  
  
The dogs being Clint’s sweet, one-eyed Lucky, and Little Bit, the four-year-old rescue pitbull mix with the chewed off ear and limp that either Bucky or Steve had acquired at some point during the last year.

(Natasha’s money is on Steve; she knows better than most how much Rogers loves difficult strays.)

Lucky came with Clint to visit Steve and Bucky, and somehow it turned into just living with them. It’s been hard for Clint, Natasha knows, not having Lucky around, but the dog can breathe fresh air and lie in warm sunshine on the back porch out here. He’s beside himself with excitement whenever Clint visits, but he’s taken to Steve and Bucky completely, and he and Little Bit (Bitty for short) are inseparable.

“Bitty, Lucky, wanna go outside?” Steve calls, crouching down with a big dumb smile when the two dogs come clacking excitedly into the kitchen, panting and bright-eyed, tails wagging furiously.

Natasha throws an amused look over her shoulder at Wilson and Barnes before following Steve and the dogs out the back door.

. . 

  
_1954 - Prague_

Peggy can’t seem to keep her hands off of the Russian.

They’ve both had more than a little to drink, and have spent the better part of an hour getting lipstick onto each others’ faces. They’ve got longer than usual this time; neither one is expected to report back to home offices for three days.

It had been Natalia’s idea, holing up in a posh hotel for the weekend, and a damn good one in Peggy’s opinion.

They’ve only been here since noon or so, but the shift in energies between them has already evolved, blossomed into something more open and loose. It is almost as if they are two normal young women with no secrets or loyalties to governments. In this hotel suite, they can lounge around in their underthings or nothing at all, they can dance with close-pressed bodies to the songs on the radio and not worry who might see.

Now, they’re both fully undressed and on the huge bed, giggling from the drink and the flutter of excitement at the feeling of getting away with something.

Natalia lies down on her back and closes her eyes, lips curving up in a small smile.

Her hair is fanned out around her, bronze and copper in the light, and Peggy is entranced by the sight of her.

There is, Peggy has always thought, just something about a woman’s body. Something that has always made her dizzy with longing, made her fingers itch to touch.

“Are you going to stare at me all afternoon?” Natalia asks coyly, not opening her eyes.

“Perhaps,” Peggy hums, suddenly getting an idea. “Open your legs for me, darling, won’t you?”

Natalia’s smile grows, and she does just that.

 

There are no missions, no men in suits in this room. There is no protocol. There is just a woman and her lover, trading in the tender secrets of lips and light touches; a perfect moment after a perfect moment, crystallized in time. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised a wee encore; here it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, this was something that just nagged at me for days after I had the little lightbulb about it, so I decided what the hell?
> 
> I'm just finishing up a super fluffy roller derby AU, and I need a super angsty palate cleanser. This will probably be 50,000 words at its end, and written in 3rd-person from Natasha's and Peggy's POVs. I've set it to 10 chapters now because I don't know, but there will most likely be more added as I write. The timeline jumps around, sorry! >_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Only the Breakable Ones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795208) by [SanVulpecula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanVulpecula/pseuds/SanVulpecula)




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